Taiwan has seven certified laboratories that have the capacity to inspect 70,000 food products per year, Premier Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌) said yesterday in a bid to assure the public about food safety.
After the government on Tuesday announced an end to an 11-year ban on food from Fukushima, Gunma, Chiba, Ibaraki and Tochigi prefectures that was implemented after the 2011 Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant disaster, Su yesterday inspected the food radiation testing laboratory at the Atomic Energy Council’s Institute of Nuclear Energy Research (INER) in Taoyuan.
The nation has seven laboratories certified by international organizations for testing radioactive residues in food products, Su said.
Photo courtesy of the Executive Yuan via CNA
“Now we have set up this ‘national team’ for testing radioactive residues, we have the capacity to test up to 70,000 food products per year, and the results can be certified and accepted in Taiwan and other nations,” he said.
Testing is expected to occur on about 20,000 food products per year, with a capacity of 70,000, he added.
“I can assure the public that Taiwan can handle the testing without a problem and can safeguard food safety,” Su said.
INER Health Physics Division director Wang Cheng-chung (王正忠) said the facilities have been approved by the International Atomic Energy Agency after passing comparison tests of radiation samples.
Besides INER, the other six laboratories are in New Taipei City, at National Tsing Hua University, at National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University in Hsinchu City, the Food and Drug Administration’s central Taiwan office in Taichung, at National Pingtung University of Science and Technology and in Kaohsiung, Wang said.
Testing is conducted by a team of 16 at INER using seven high-purity germanium coaxial detectors, which currently test 35,200 samples annually, he said, adding that it can ramp up capacity by purchasing three new detectors.
The past decade’s testing of 180,000 samples had turned up only 236 products with low radiation levels well below safety limits, or a detection rate of just over 10 per 10,000 samples, Wang said.
The instruments have a detection limit for cesium-134 and cesium-137 of 1 becquerel per kilogram, which is 1 percent of the legal limit for food products, he said.
Additional reporting by Jason Pan
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