The Ministry of Health and Welfare (MOHW) is today to convene a meeting with the nation’s four major cooking oil producers to establish a new oil management system, Minister of Health and Welfare Shih Chung-liang (石崇良) said yesterday, following criticism of the cooking oil recall issue.
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on Tuesday last week was notified by Central Union Oil Corp that batch No. 315-1150404, manufactured in April, contained excessive levels of the carcinogen benzopyrene during internal testing, and that the batch had been distributed to three companies — Taisun Enterprise Co, Fwusow Industry Co and Formosa Oilseed Processing Co.
The three companies on Tuesday last week began removing products that used the contaminated oil from shelves and launched recalls after receiving the notification, the FDA said.
Photo: Taipei Times
However, the FDA initially only ordered the recall of the raw oil and did not require the removal of blended oils or downstream food products, raising public concern.
Food safety authorities on Saturday expanded the product recall to processed foods made with more than 20 percent of the contaminated oil.
The FDA said it has notified 257 affected businesses, and required them to remove affected products from shelves and publicly disclose product information by 11:59pm today.
Shih said the Food Safety and Sanitation Act (食品安全衛生管理法) is guided by two core principles.
First, in cases involving illegal additives or substances exceeding toxic limits, first and second-tier products must be fully removed and recalled, he said.
Second, for legally permitted additives or substances formed naturally during production, a “safety threshold” approach is used — only products exceeding the standard are pulled from shelves. Second-tier products are generally not considered a risk, he added.
The current case was handled under the second framework, Shih said.
He said he initially found it was “strange” not to call for a second-tier recall, but added that the FDA followed the law and acted in line with regulations.
The agency later added blended oils to the recall list after assessing that the case was far more widespread than previous cases, Shih said.
The regulations would need to be revisited through a new expert meeting, he added.
FDA Director-General Chiang Chih-kang (姜至剛) cited experts as saying that the incident might be linked to heat damage from post-harvest drying and fumigation of some Brazilian soybeans.
Benzopyrene levels in crude soybean oil vary significantly and can typically only be reduced by up to about 80 percent even after refining, he said.
If the raw material already contains high levels of benzopyrene, the refined oil might still exceed legal limits, he added.
While soybeans imported from the US have showed no detectable benzopyrene and past tests of Brazilian soybeans have all complied with regulations, in April, a batch of Brazilian soybeans was found to contain 1.6 ppb, within the legal limit of 2 ppb, Chiang said.
Benzopyrene levels could also vary between batches of raw materials in continuous production, so some oil that originally passed testing might later exceed limits downstream, he cited experts as saying.
That is why the problem was first picked up in checks by downstream companies, Chiang said.
Experts have recommended tightening controls at the raw material stage, including lowering the acceptable moisture level for Brazilian soybeans from 13 percent to 12.5 percent to reduce heat damage risk from drying and fumigation, he added.
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