Wu Kun-yu pushes for another amendment to the Food Safety Act: How does the industry see it?
Taiwan has been through food safety incidents such as the cooking oil scandal, and the Food Safety Act has been amended many times, with ever harsher penalties, yet the regulatory side remains inadequate. As the new government prepares to take office, Democratic Progressive Party legislator Wu Kun-yu has drafted the direction for amending the Food Safety Act: the short-term goal will explicitly stipulate that "health authorities must bear the responsibility of guidance," while the long-term goal will promote risk assessment as the scientific basis for policy formulation.
The food industry has many objections to the latter. "Food management and risk assessment are two different things; risk assessment is only a means. If it becomes a legal standard, businesses will not be able to operate."
Wu Kun-yu's Food Safety Act Amendment: Four Major Directions
The Taiwan Association for Food Science and Technology recently held a "Food Safety Management Policy Communication and Exchange Meeting," inviting Democratic Progressive Party legislator Wu Kun-yu to speak freely about the future direction of amending the Act Governing Food Safety and Sanitation. The event brought together experts from the Food Industry Research and Development Institute, food processors, and professors from food science departments at domestic universities.
Wu Kun-yu began by saying that the amendment of the Food Safety Act will be divided into short-, medium-, and long-term goals. The content of the short-term amendment has already been drafted and will enter substantive review in the Legislative Yuan. The major changes in the amendment are as follows:
(1) Health authorities must bear the responsibility of guiding and supervising food businesses' self-management
Wu Kun-yu believes, "In the past, the government let businesses manage themselves but provided no guidance at all. That logic is very strange. It should be guidance first, and only after businesses manage in compliance with laws and regulations should they be allowed to manage themselves."
(2) Incorporate "consumer rights" into the legislative spirit of Article 1 of the Food Safety Act
In addition to incorporating the wording concretely
(3) Establish "food identity standards"
"Food identity standards" refer to the management model of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, defining a food's "identity" through regulations that specify its "ingredients, proportions, formula, or manufacturing method," thereby preventing food fraud cases from occurring.
Wu Kun-yu explained that this was the inspiration brought by the Ting Hsin problematic oil incident. In the future, once "oil products" are clearly defined through identity standards, those that should not be used as edible oil raw materials, such as feed oil and swill oil, cannot enter the manufacturing process.
(4) Medium- and long-term planning for a risk assessment center
Wu Kun-yu hopes to make good use of risk assessment expertise to establish a national security risk assessment center for Taiwan. "This risk assessment body must be separate from the food safety management body, rather than, as now, having risk assessment and food management authority held in the hands of the Food and Drug Administration."
Wu Kun-yu explained that once the status of risk assessment is independent, the body can purely integrate the latest scientific evidence to conduct research assessing the impact of a given toxic substance on human health. Such research can serve as a reference tool influencing decision-making, and in the future the center will be staffed mainly by professionals in epidemiology and toxicology, rather than food science experts.
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