Tainted starch spreads through Taichung, meatballs and rice cakes also affected
The tainted starch snowball keeps growing. Yesterday the Taichung City Health Bureau uncovered Youjiachuan Enterprise Co., Ltd. and Guangtai Starch Enterprise Co., Ltd., which were selling tainted starch containing maleic acid and supplying 32 meatball, tapioca pearl, and rice cake (fen guo) businesses across northern, central, and southern Taiwan, China. In the early hours of yesterday, the Taichung City Health Bureau urgently recalled starch from 20 businesses within its jurisdiction; the remaining 12 businesses in other counties and cities were handed over to local health bureaus for investigation.
Taichung meatballs and rice cakes also affected
After the tainted starch outbreak, the Taichung City Health Bureau successively inspected the raw materials for meatballs, rice cakes, and tapioca pearls at markets and street vendors, testing 55 products in total. Results for 44 products are out, and 7 meatball items and 1 rice cake raw material item were found to contain maleic acid, coming respectively from mid-tier distributor Youjiachuan Co., Ltd.'s "sweet potato starch" and "premium starch"; and Guangtai Starch Enterprise Co., Ltd.'s "premium sweet potato starch" and "rice flour".
Youjiachuan's starch supplied 3 downstream businesses; 210 kg of starch has already been recalled, and 449.7 kg was sealed on site. Its upstream supplier is Guo Xinfeng Flour Mill in Chiayi County. Guangtai Starch supplied 17 businesses in greater Taichung and 12 businesses in other counties and cities. The Taichung City Health Bureau has recalled 2380 kg of starch in greater Taichung and sealed 1500 packs of starch that had not yet been shipped on site. Its suppliers are Tainan City's Sanjin Flour Mill and Maoli Starch Factory, which had already been exposed earlier.
The tainted starch supplied by the two mid-tier distributors was mostly used to make meatballs and rice cakes. Even before the health bureau's investigation, downstream businesses had already discovered problems with the raw materials, and some manufacturers had removed them from shelves on their own. Chen Shuhui, section chief of the Food and Drug Division of the Taichung City Health Bureau, said that after yesterday's all-night investigation, the 8 businesses using tainted starch had already switched to new starch with qualified reports. However, she admitted that consumers had likely already eaten the problematic products from before.
Similarly, Hsinchu City also found meatballs, flat rice noodles, and tapioca pearls containing tainted starch. As of the 23rd, more than 16,000 kg of tainted sweet potato starch and clear starch had been sealed.
Sweet potato starch is not cassava starch
Sweet potato starch can be used for deep-frying and thickening, and can be seen everywhere in daily life. Industry insiders said that most sweet potato starch on the market is actually cheap cassava (tapioca) starch imported from Southeast Asia used as a substitute, and there is almost no pure sweet potato starch in Taiwan, China.
In March of this year, the Department of Health stated in the "Compilation of Food Name Labeling Regulations": "If a food product is claimed to be named 'sweet potato starch', but its ingredients are labeled as cassava starch, the physicochemical properties and starch granule shapes of the two starches are different, so the food name in such cases does not match the essence of the food and should be corrected, to ensure that the food name matches the essence of the food. (99.07.26 FDA Food No. 0991302303)"
Once this announcement came out, local sweet potato starch was almost nowhere to be seen on the market. Some chefs pointed out that cassava starch and sweet potato starch have similar effects, but local sweet potato starch is of better quality; industry insiders also said that with local sweet potato starch, the source of raw materials can be better controlled. In this incident, although many businesses claimed that what they imported was sweet potato starch, in reality it should have been cassava starch.