The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) yesterday said it would conduct an extensive inspection of beverage chains later this month, especially the tea leaves that they use, as the pesticide scare involving tea store chain Stornaway (英國藍) continues to unfold.
“Beverage chains were already listed as one of the agency’s inspection targets earlier this year and the mission is set to start at the end of this month,” FDA Director-General Chiang Yu-mei (姜郁美) said.
Tea leaves are to be a top priority for inspection, Chiang said, adding that some local health bureaus have already started their own investigations.
The probe follows recent discoveries that seven ingredients used in Stornaway’s tea beverages — rose buds, Earl Grey tea leaves, Ceylon tea leaves, Darjeeling tea leaves, oolong tea leaves, Assam black tea leaves and jade green tea leaves — contained excessive levels of pesticide residues.
Stornaway has said it purchased the first four types of tea ingredients from Taipei-based Chou Chieh Trading Co (洲界貿易), while the other three products were procured from Taichung-based Da Tong Tea House (大統茶莊).
FDA Southern Center interim director Liu Fang-ming (劉芳銘) said that aside from the rose buds — which were found to contain 11 types of pesticides, including dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (DDT) — the other six contained excessive levels of fipronil, which ranged from 0.004 to 0.01 parts per million (ppm).
The maximum permissible level for fipronil in food products is 0.002ppm in Taiwan.
“Based on our understanding, Da Tong had supplied the potentially tainted tea leaves to Stornaway only, but investigators are still trying to determine how many firms Chou Chieh had sold the contaminated tea leaves to,” Liu said.
As of yesterday, local health bureaus have confiscated a total of 1,628.7kg of the tainted tea leaves nationwide.
Taichung Health Bureau Deputy Director Tsai Shu-feng (蔡淑鳳) quoted a manager, surnamed Ko (柯), at Da Tong as saying that the tea house began selling four kinds of custom-blended tea leaves to Stornaway in 2012, including the three types of teas in question and one called “Taiwan green tea” (台灣清茶).
“Ko said the tea leaves were sourced from Vietnam and Taiwan... The bureau has sent samples of all four types of teas for testing and the result should be released in a week,” Tsai said.
In related developments, Stornaway’s franchisees yesterday issued a joint statement threatening to take legal action and demand compensation from the tea chain’s proprietors.
“We were all shocked and stunned when we learned that many of the company’s tea beverage ingredients contained pesticide residues, and we would like to express our sincerest apology to the public,” the statement said.
It said the franchisees were only informed of the results of a test conducted by a third party authorized by the company’s headquarters at the last minute.
“We were enraged by and condemn how headquarters has handled the situation,” it said.
“Like all consumers, we are also victims in this incident,” it added.
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