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.
The military has spotted two Chinese warships operating in waters near Penghu County in the Taiwan Strait and sent its own naval and air forces to monitor the vessels, the Ministry of National Defense (MND) said. Beijing sends warships and warplanes into the waters and skies around Taiwan on an almost daily basis, drawing condemnation from Taipei. While the ministry offers daily updates on the locations of Chinese military aircraft, it only rarely gives details of where Chinese warships are operating, generally only when it detects aircraft carriers, as happened last week. A Chinese destroyer and a frigate entered waters to the southwest
The eastern extension of the Taipei MRT Red Line could begin operations as early as late June, the Taipei Department of Rapid Transit Systems said yesterday. Taipei Rapid Transit Corp said it is considering offering one month of free rides on the new section to mark its opening. Construction progress on the 1.4km extension, which is to run from the current terminal Xiangshan Station to a new eastern terminal, Guangci/Fengtian Temple Station, was 90.6 percent complete by the end of last month, the department said in a report to the Taipei City Council's Transportation Committee. While construction began in October 2016 with an
NON-RED SUPPLY: Boosting the nation’s drone industry is becoming increasingly urgent as China’s UAV dominance could become an issue in a crisis, an analyst said Taiwan’s drone exports to Europe grew 41.7-fold from 2024 to last year, with demand from Ukraine’s fight against Russian aggression the most likely driver of growth, a study showed. The Institute for Democracy, Society and Emerging Technology (DSET) in a statement on Wednesday said it found that many of Taiwan’s uncrewed aerial vehicle (UAV) sales were from Poland and the Czech Republic. These countries likely transferred the drones to Ukraine to aid it in its fight against the Russian invasion that started in 2022, it said. Despite the gains, Taiwan is not the dominant drone exporter to these markets, ranking second and fourth
Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s comment last year on Tokyo’s potential reaction to a Taiwan-China conflict has forced Beijing to rewrite its invasion plans, a retired Japanese general said. Takaichi told the Diet on Nov. 7 last year that a Chinese naval blockade or military attack on Taiwan could constitute a “survival-threatening situation” for Japan, potentially allowing Tokyo to exercise its right to collective self-defense. Former Japan Ground Self-Defense Force general Kiyofumi Ogawa said in a recent speech that the remark has been interpreted as meaning Japan could intervene in the early stages of a Taiwan Strait conflict, undermining China’s previous assumptions
RSS