Amid rising safety concerns about tea leaves produced in Nantou County, tea farmers from the area yesterday said their products have passed all safety inspections, questioning whether the suspect tea leaves have been contaminated in later manufacturing processes.
The farmers showed certificates and other documents showing that their products have passed all safety inspections at a press conference in Taipei, after it was discovered that tea products with pesticide residues sold from several chain tea stores were made with tea grown from their county.
Nantou Tea Farmers’ Association president Hsieh Ming-ching (謝明璟) said that aside from outside inspections, the farmers themselves set strict guidelines about the way they grow their products.
Photo: George Tsorng, Taipei Times
“This incident has already caused some damage to the industry; we’re very worried that it’s going to destroy the business that we have invested so much effort into building,” he said.
Taiwan Confederation of the Tea Industry member Ho Chi-hsiang (何啟祥) said that as now is the time for spring harvest, in delivering samples for inspection, “we’re very careful about using pesticides and we would provide inspection documents for customers upon request.”
“We hope consumers will not lose faith in Taiwanese tea,” he said.
Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Tsai Huang-liang (蔡煌瑯), who joined the tea farmers at the press conference, said Nantou County’s Department of Agriculture conducts inspections every year in major tea growing areas in the county, including Lugu (鹿谷), Jhushan (竹山), Yuchi (魚池) and Renai (仁愛) townships.
“Seven-hundred-and-fifty samples were tested this year and ... 96 percent passed the inspection on pesticide residues,” he said.
“The government should check if the tea products were contaminated in later manufacturing processes before releasing the information. It should not hold farmers responsible for everything,” he said.
Liu Fang-ming (劉芳銘), director of the Food and Drug Administration’s Southern Taiwan Management Center, said that there is a possibility that tea retailers could mix imported tea leaves with locally produced ones.
“We will continue to investigate it,” Liu said.
Tropical Storm Nari is not a threat to Taiwan, based on its positioning and trajectory, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Nari has strengthened from a tropical depression that was positioned south of Japan, it said. The eye of the storm is about 2,100km east of Taipei, with a north-northeast trajectory moving toward the eastern seaboard of Japan, CWA data showed. Based on its current path, the storm would not affect Taiwan, the agency said.
The Taipei Department of Health’s latest inspection of fresh fruit and vegetables sold in local markets revealed a 25 percent failure rate, with most contraventions involving excessive pesticide residues, while two durians were also found to contain heavy metal cadmium at levels exceeding safety limits. Health Food and Drug Division Director Lin Kuan-chen (林冠蓁) yesterday said the agency routinely conducts inspections of fresh produce sold at traditional markets, supermarkets, hypermarkets, retail outlets and restaurants, testing for pesticide residues and other harmful substances. In its most recent inspection, conducted in May, the department randomly collected 52 samples from various locations, with testing showing
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