The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it soon plans to require all ramen stores with two or more shops in the city to register their ingredients to ensure food safety and disclose information about food products to the public.
Established in 2013, the city’s food ingredient registration Web site — Food Tracer Taipei — contains results from the health department’s food inspections, as well as data posted by stores and restaurants about the ingredients that they use.
There were 10 major categories of food establishments that need to register ingredients — including chain beverage and iced dessert stores, chain coffee shops, fast food restaurants and chain breakfast shops — and the health department announced that it has opened two new categories: chain Japanese ramen stores and traditional markets.
Fourteen Japanese ramen brands have already registered 95 types of products on the platform, including 682 ingredients, department section head Chen Yi-ting (陳怡婷) said.
The department is planning to require all ramen stores with two or more shops in the city to register their ingredients on the platform. Starting next month, it would gather feedback and expect to implement the regulation by next year at the earliest.
Eight traditional markets with 232 food stalls are using the platform, the Taipei Market Administration Office said, adding that four more markets would be included by the end of the year, a total of 350 food stalls.
The full disclosure of ingredients on the platform is a first step toward incorporating autonomous management and is in line with the city government’s principles of openness and transparency, Taipei Deputy Mayor Teng Chia-chi (鄧家基) said.
Taipei is the food capital of the nation and many foreign and local cuisines are popular in the city, so the government and the restaurants have a responsibility to ensure that the public can enjoy safe and delicious food, Department of Health Commissioner Huang Shier-chieg (黃世傑) said.
People can scan QR codes of establishments on the registration platform to learn about the ingredients used in food products they want to purchase, he added.
A strong continental cold air mass and abundant moisture bringing snow to mountains 3,000m and higher over the past few days are a reminder that more than 60 years ago Taiwan had an outdoor ski resort that gradually disappeared in part due to climate change. On Oct. 24, 2021, the National Development Council posted a series of photographs on Facebook recounting the days when Taiwan had a ski resort on Hehuanshan (合歡山) in Nantou County. More than 60 years ago, when developing a branch of the Central Cross-Island Highway, the government discovered that Hehuanshan, with an elevation of more than 3,100m,
Taiwan’s population last year shrank further and births continued to decline to a yearly low, the Ministry of the Interior announced today. The ministry published the 2024 population demographics statistics, highlighting record lows in births and bringing attention to Taiwan’s aging population. The nation’s population last year stood at 23,400,220, a decrease of 20,222 individuals compared to 2023. Last year, there were 134,856 births, representing a crude birth rate of 5.76 per 1,000 people, a slight decline from 2023’s 135,571 births and 5.81 crude birth rate. This decrease of 715 births resulted in a new record low per the ministry’s data. Since 2016, which saw
SECURITY: To protect the nation’s Internet cables, the navy should use buoys marking waters within 50m of them as a restricted zone, a former navy squadron commander said A Chinese cargo ship repeatedly intruded into Taiwan’s contiguous and sovereign waters for three months before allegedly damaging an undersea Internet cable off Kaohsiung, a Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times) investigation revealed. Using publicly available information, the Liberty Times was able to reconstruct the Shunxing-39’s movements near Taiwan since Double Ten National Day last year. Taiwanese officials did not respond to the freighter’s intrusions until Friday last week, when the ship, registered in Cameroon and Tanzania, turned off its automatic identification system shortly before damage was inflicted to a key cable linking Taiwan to the rest of
China’s newest Type-076 amphibious assault ship has two strengths and weaknesses, wrote a Taiwanese defense expert, adding that further observations of its capabilities are warranted. Jiang Hsin-biao (江炘杓), an assistant researcher at the National Defense and Security Research, made the comments in a report recently published by the institute about the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) military and political development. China christened its new assault ship Sichuan in a ceremony on Dec. 27 last year at Shanghai’s Hudong Shipyard, China’s Xinhua news agency reported. “The vessel, described as the world’s largest amphibious assault ship by the [US think tank] Center for Strategic and International
RSS