The Food and Drug Administration has not tried to cover up the discovery of a duck contaminated with an excessive level of dioxins, Deputy Director-General Chiang Yu-mei (姜郁美) said yesterday.
Local media yesterday reported that one of 21 samples of duck meat examined by the agency in July as part of a random inspection was found to have dioxin levels at 15 picograms of the WHO’s toxicity equivalent per gram of fat (pg WHO-TEQ/g), about 8.5 times the nation’s maximum permissible level for poultry of 1.75pg WHO-TEQ/g.
The findings have yet to be officially made public by the agency, but were reportedly released by FDA Northern Center for Regional Administration director Feng Jun-lan (馮潤蘭) at a press conference at the Executive Yuan on Tuesday.
In an interview yesterday with the Central News Agency (CNA), Chiang said the discovery was made during an inspection of duck meat and duck eggs carried out by local health departments.
“Only one sample was found to have excessive levels of dioxin and the rest were normal... The Council of Agriculture has imposed mobile control measures on eight duck farms, and the Environmental Protection Administration is searching for the source of the [dioxin] contamination,” CNA quoted Chiang as saying.
As for the delay in releasing the findings, Chiang said: “We could not terrify the nation’s 1 million ducks just because of one.”
Chiang yesterday declined to answer reporters’ questions about the tests, saying only that information would be made public at a press conference on Monday.
Linkou Chang Gung Memorial Hospital toxicologist Yen Tsung-hai (顏宗海) said the WHO has proven that dioxin is a cancer-linked hazard to humans, and nearly 90 percent of human exposure to dioxins is via food.
“Short-term excessive exposure to the chemical compounds could lead to skin disease and impaired liver functions, while long-term contact with small amounts of the substance could affect the immune and endocrine systems and increase pregnant women’s risk of miscarriage and fetal abnormalities,” Yen said.
The Central Weather Administration (CWA) today issued a sea warning for Typhoon Fung-wong effective from 5:30pm, while local governments canceled school and work for tomorrow. A land warning is expected to be issued tomorrow morning before it is expected to make landfall on Wednesday, the agency said. Taoyuan, and well as Yilan, Hualien and Penghu counties canceled work and school for tomorrow, as well as mountainous district of Taipei and New Taipei City. For updated information on closures, please visit the Directorate-General of Personnel Administration Web site. As of 5pm today, Fung-wong was about 490km south-southwest of Oluanpi (鵝鑾鼻), Taiwan's southernmost point.
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Almost a quarter of volunteer soldiers who signed up from 2021 to last year have sought early discharge, the Legislative Yuan’s Budget Center said in a report. The report said that 12,884 of 52,674 people who volunteered in the period had sought an early exit from the military, returning NT$895.96 million (US$28.86 million) to the government. In 2021, there was a 105.34 percent rise in the volunteer recruitment rate, but the number has steadily declined since then, missing recruitment targets, the Chinese-language United Daily News said, citing the report. In 2021, only 521 volunteers dropped out of the military, the report said, citing
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