Two shipments of avocados imported from the US by Costco Taiwan were seized at the border due to elevated levels of cadmium, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) said yesterday.
A shipment of 990kg of fresh avocados from Riverside, California-based Index Fresh Inc was found to contain 0.19 milligrams of the heavy metal cadmium per kilogram of avocados (mg/kg), while a shipment of 1,423.8kg from Oxnard, California-based Mission Produce Inc was found to contain 0.06mg/kg — both higher than the maximum permitted level of 0.05mg/kg.
The FDA said that seized products are either returned to their country of origin or destroyed.
Over the past six months, Costco Taiwan has imported four shipments of avocados from the US that have been seized after failing a border inspection, leading the FDA to adopt more stringent inspection measures for US avocados imported by the company, FDA official Lin Hsu-yang (林旭陽) said.
The FDA had asked Costco to improve quality assurance measures for avocado imports, while the company responded that it was working with its US suppliers to solve the problem, Lin said.
The avocados were one of 21 products in a weekly FDA report on imports seized for food safety violations.
Other seized imports, including fresh apples from the US, fresh strawberries and muskmelons from Japan, jujubes from China and green asparagus from Thailand, were found to contain elevated levels of pesticide residues.
Several shipments of fresh apples from the US were also found to contain elevated levels of the insecticide pyrimethanil, Lin said, adding that the FDA would begin to inspect 20 to 50 percent of US apples, up from 2 to 10 percent.
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