Ninety-three percent of elementary and junior-high schools that offer lunch use locally produced food ingredients, Council of Agriculture Minister Chen Chi-chung (陳吉仲) said yesterday, in response to concerns that food imported from five Japanese prefectures near the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant would be served in school lunches.
Chen made the statement as elementary and junior-high schools across the country are to reopen tomorrow, following a three-week winter break.
The Executive Yuan on Tuesday announced that Taiwan is by the end of this month to lift an 11-year ban on the importation of all food products produced in Japan’s Fukushima, Ibaraki, Tochigi, Gunma and Chiba prefectures, as long as importers and food manufacturers provide a certificate of origin and a radiation inspection certificate for their products.
Photo: George Tsorng, Taipei Times
Mushrooms, wild game and hill potherbs produced in the five prefectures remain banned.
However, some parents are concerned that schools would use food products from the five Japanese prefectures as ingredients in school lunches.
Chen told reporters on the sidelines of a conference that 93 percent of school lunches use ingredients of premium agricultural foods that meet Taiwan’s “certified agricultural standards.”
There are also certified “traceable agricultural products” and organic food, he said, adding that the origins of the food products can be traced through QR codes assigned to them.
“These mechanisms are to ensure that more than 3,000 elementary and junior-high schools in Taiwan use healthy and fresh domestically produced ingredients in lunches,” he said. “Students and their parents can be assured that school lunches are safe to eat, and the nation’s food and agricultural education can advance further.”
A draft food and agricultural education act is being reviewed by legislators and should be passed in the upcoming legislative session, Chen said, adding that the bill is important, as it would promote the use of local agricultural products.
Chen reiterated that the government has implemented a series of mechanisms for inspecting food imported from the five Japanese prefectures.
Aside from proof of origin and radiation inspection certificates, products imported from the five prefectures would be subject to inspections batch by batch at the border, Chen added.
Inspection results would be published daily on the Food and Drug Administration’s Web site, he said.
The nation’s six laboratories equipped to inspect residual radiation in food are capable of processing 70,000 samples per year, Chen said.
Once Taiwan allows the entry of food products from the five prefectures, the number of Japanese food products to be inspected annually would only increase to about 20,000 from 17,000, he said.
The council would also inspect aquatic food products sold at retail markets, he said.
The nation’s maximum levels of iodine-131, cesium-134 and cesium-37 in general food products are 10 to 100 becquerels per kilogram.
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