The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on Wednesday said 16.1 percent of cosmetic and personal care products it has inspected do not meet legal requirements, as they contain unregistered drug ingredients.
The FDA said it randomly sampled 130 cosmetic products sold online or in stores, as people might be considering buying them as gifts for Mother’s Day, which falls on May 14 this year.
Twenty-one products failed the inspection and 20 of them were found to contain drug ingredients that required registration, while a depilatory cream imported from Thailand contained calcium thioglycolate for hair removal and should have been registered as a drug, the FDA said.
All of the products that failed the inspection were imported, it added.
FDA official Huang Shou-chieh (黃守潔) said the products contained drugs such as salicylic acid, which is often used in acne treatment, and triclocarban, which is used in some antibacterial products.
All cosmetic and personal care products containing drugs, whether imported or domestically made, must be registered at the FDA for examination and approval before being sold online or in shops to protect consumers from developing allergic reactions or other adverse health effects, she said.
Huang said people convicted of selling such products without registration and approval from the FDA could face up to a year in prison or a fine up to NT$150,000 (US$4,977), and people convicted of importing drugs without approval could face up to 10 years in prison or a fine up to NT$100 million, in accordance with the Statute for Control of Cosmetic Hygiene (化粧品衛生管理條例).
There are 77 incidents of Taiwanese travelers going missing in China between January last year and last month, the Straits Exchange Foundation (SEF) said. More than 40 remain unreachable, SEF Secretary-General Luo Wen-jia (羅文嘉) said on Friday. Most of the reachable people in the more than 30 other incidents were allegedly involved in fraud, while some had disappeared for personal reasons, Luo said. One of these people is Kuo Yu-hsuan (郭宇軒), a 22-year-old Taiwanese man from Kaohsiung who went missing while visiting China in August. China’s Taiwan Affairs Office last month said in a news statement that he was under investigation
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