Tainan City Government’s Department of Health yesterday continued its investigation into the green plums used by well-known tea chain 50 Lan (50嵐), which were found to contain excessive levels of sulfur dioxide.
The department yesterday dispatched three teams of health inspectors to examine the tea chain’s 28 branches in Tainan and the company providing the tainted plums.
“Our preliminary investigation showed that the problematic batch of green plums, which expire on April 24 next year, was a custom order placed by 50 Lan, which purchased a total of 52 barrels of 3kg each of the product,” the department’s Food and Drug Section director Hsu Hui-mei (許惠美) said.
Photo: Huang Wen-huang, Taipei Times
Hsu said the plums could have had excessive sulfur dioxide levels because the company providing the plums had soaked them in edible-grade sodium metabisulfite, but failed to properly process them in accordance with standard operating procedures.
The department has requested the supplier to improve its management of food additives and to test its plum products for sulfur dioxide, preservatives and saccharin, Hsu said.
The inspection came one day after the department was informed by its Taitung County counterpart of a June 16 test of green plums used by 50 Lan, which found that the product contained 0.138 parts per million (ppm) of sulfur dioxide, higher than the maximum permissible level of 0.1ppm.
It is not the first time that 50 Lan, which has more than 500 outlets nationwide, has found itself embroiled in food scares. In April, one of its tea beverages was found to contain excessive levels of fipronil.
Hsu said the tainted green plums were mainly used at the tea chain’s Kaohsiung City stores, as well as in Pingtung and Taitung counties, adding that a total of 147.3kg of the deficient product has been removed from the shelves.
The city’s Food and Drug Section official Cho Ching-ching (卓金津) said companies in the case could face fines ranging from NT$30,000 to NT$3 million (US$962 to US$96,153) in accordance with the Act Governing Food Safety and Sanitation (食品安全衛生管理法).
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