15% of processed egg products fail inspection: Taipei City Department of Health announces sampling results

The Taipei City Department of Health today (8/25) released the results of spot checks on processed egg products for the month of June. Of the 26 items sampled, four failed, for a failure rate of 15.4%. The "Champion Premium Salted Duck Egg" sold at the Bade store of the Top-Mart supermarket tested positive for the antibiotic florfenicol, which must not be detected, while the "Duck Farmer Century Egg" from Taiyuan Food Store in Wenshan District and the "Salted Duck Egg" and "Songhua Century Egg" from Hexin Egg Store in Shilin District were found to contain excessive levels of the heavy metal copper.

Three egg products exceed copper limits, one contains a banned antibiotic

In June of this year, the Taipei City Department of Health carried out spot checks on products including century eggs, salted (duck) eggs and braised eggs at egg stores, grocery stores, farmers' associations, supermarkets and hypermarkets, sampling a total of 26 items. The tests covered 48 types of multi-class animal drugs, chloramphenicols (chloramphenicol, thiamphenicol, florfenicol), Salmonella, the heavy metal lead (standard 0.3 ppm) and copper (standard 5 ppm).

There were four problematic processed egg products in total: one salted duck egg was found to contain an animal drug that must not be used, and one salted duck egg and two century eggs were found to contain excessive copper. The "Champion Premium Salted Duck Egg" from the Bade store of Top-Mart was found to contain 0.043 ppm of the antibiotic florfenicol, which must not be used; the supplier is Hongliang Food Co., Ltd. of Xinyuan, Pingtung.

In addition, the "Duck Farmer Century Egg" sold by Taiyuan Food Store on Section 2, Zhinan Road in Wenshan District, and the "Salted Duck Egg" and "Songhua Century Egg" from Hexin Egg Store on Danan Road in Shilin District all tested above the copper limit, at 5.86 ppm, 6.4 ppm and 7.22 ppm respectively, all exceeding the 5 ppm standard for copper in processed egg products.