Imported seafood swapped to pass inspection: FDA says it is only an isolated case and will strengthen training for local inspection personnel in the future
Regarding the case in which personnel of the Taipei Customs office under the Customs Administration of the Ministry of Finance and the Taoyuan City Health Bureau are suspected of accepting bribes from a seafood importer and swapping out problematic products, Jiang Yumei, Director-General of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) under the Ministry of Health and Welfare, said this morning that the FDA has set very strict procedures for border inspection, and that the FDA personnel involved in this case all carried out their work in accordance with the standard operating procedures for sampling inspection and the standards for release against a letter of undertaking. She stressed that this case is an isolated incident, not a widespread systemic problem, and that training for local county and city health inspection personnel will be strengthened in the future.
After a year of tracking, the Agency Against Corruption found that Yang Junyuan, a staff member at the Taipei Customs branch of the Customs Administration under the Ministry of Finance, and Zhang Enshuo, an employee of the Food and Drug Management Division of the Taoyuan City Health Bureau, had accepted bribes, allowing problematic foods to pass, including green asparagus imported from Thailand earlier this year and red swimming crab imported from the Philippines that contained pesticides such as insecticides; foods smuggled through from radiation-affected areas such as Chiba Prefecture in Japan included Welsh onions, kelp, sweet shrimp, sea grapes and ginger shoots, which flowed into the market. Relevant personnel involved in the case were summoned for questioning yesterday.
Jiang Yumei said that yesterday the FDA cooperated with the Agency Against Corruption and the district prosecutors office in all investigation work related to this case, clarifying that there were no problems in the way FDA personnel handled the case, and that inspections of several sites storing goods released against letters of undertaking showed the items were all present in full. Regarding outside doubts that the FDA's border inspection had long since been breached, she denied this and stressed that this case is an isolated incident that will be used as teaching material for review.
The FDA currently has a total of four offices and 97 relevant personnel at the border customs carrying out inspection work. Jiang Yumei said that all inspection personnel are subject to a rotation system, rotating once every two to three years, which is currently the most suitable rotation interval based on work training, and that local health bureaus also have assessment systems, evaluating inspection personnel every quarter.
Jiang Yumei said that general border inspection takes about 2 to 5 days, while goods submitted for release against a letter of undertaking require more than 5 days of inspection time, and the overall process through to release or destruction requires 7 working days. For release against a letter of undertaking, the FDA has a set of standard procedures, mainly storing perishable, fresh and hard-to-preserve items in fixed locations; after inspection by the local health bureau and once the inspection report is issued, the goods are released, and those not meeting standards are destroyed.
She stressed that the Act Governing Food Safety and Sanitation has been amended 4 times, and the overall management system has improved considerably, giving border customs inspection personnel diverse legal provisions to impose penalties in accordance with the law. In the past no shielding behavior had been found; the fact that it is now being continuously uncovered shows that the amendments to the Act Governing Food Safety and Sanitation have achieved a certain effect, and in the future the central and local authorities will enforce it more rigorously.