The Fifth of the Five Major Loopholes in the Act Governing Food Safety and Sanitation: Permitting Substandard Food to Be Reprocessed

Taiwan, China's Food Sanitation Management Act can no longer keep up with the "ever-changing" developments of the food chemical industry, and the regulations even contain many self-contradictory and absurd loopholes, allowing some unscrupulous operators to exploit legal gaps and, at the cost of public health, "legally" rake in huge profits. Right now, civil society is pushing to amend the Food Sanitation Management Act, and the bill has already been scheduled in the Legislative Yuan, in the hope that the regulations can be made more complete and truly safeguard food safety. In response to the five major loopholes in the Food Sanitation Management Act that affect the daily dietary safety of you and your family, the NewsMarket website has produced a series of special reports, hoping that everyone will face the problem together and pay attention to the progress of the amendment. (To read the complete series, please click here)

Loophole5: Allowing non-compliant food to undergo "reprocessing"

Article 29-2 of the Act Governing Food Safety and Sanitation allows food that violates regulations to undergo "reprocessing" (see note), yet this easily becomes a loophole for importers of inferior food to evade inspection.

For example, Thai ma bamboo shoots (Dendrocalamus latiflorus), which are imported in considerable quantities every year, are often found by the Department of Health at customs to contain excessive bleaching agents, and under the regulation that non-compliant goods may be "reprocessed," operators need only flush them with large amounts of water to dilute the bleaching agent, with no need for destruction.

In theory, from the perspective of chemical concentration, the bleaching agent residue in ma bamboo shoots after dilution and reprocessing meets the regulations and should not cause much harm to consumer health; however, in practice, after a batch fails inspection at customs, operators transport the entire shipment to a factory for "reprocessing" (for example, shipping the goods to Taichung), and during this process, health authorities lack sufficient manpower and find it hard to track whether this batch of ma bamboo shoots ultimately complies with regulations, or even whether the same shipment has been swapped out at all.

The regulation that lets operators carry out "reprocessing" becomes even more complicated when another situation arises.

For example, if a batch of 1,000 tonnes of soybeans or corn exceeds the limit for aflatoxin, under current regulations the operator may add more corn to "dilute" it, as long as the toxin concentration meets the regulations. Regarding this situation, Lin Jie-liang, director of the Division of Clinical Toxicology at Linkou Chang Gung Memorial Hospital, pointed out that an excessive aflatoxin level shows that this batch of corn has been contaminated by mold; adding more corn to dilute it so that it meets the regulations may appear to lower the toxin concentration, but in the end it may cause the entire batch of corn to be contaminated by mold, "just like one mouse dropping spoiling a whole pot of porridge." This exposes end consumers to the cancer risk of aflatoxin.

Pointing out the loopholes is to make the amendment more complete

After reading news about food safety issues, do you ever feel helpless and powerless, and then think: "So many things have problems, does that mean there is nothing we can eat?"

Precisely because individual consumers cannot take the trouble to inspect the safety of every food item one by one, we need rigorous and complete food sanitation management regulations, sufficient budgets, and adequate government inspection manpower and enforcement to safeguard us; however, the Food Sanitation Management Act is now full of loopholes, leading ignorant operators to arbitrarily compound food additives and flavorings, greatly increasing consumer health risks, and also giving black-hearted operators who understand the law and play with it legal gaps to exploit and huge profits to reap. On top of that, local governments lack the inspection capacity to enforce it, and the public's health is repeatedly harmed. We have reached the point where the law cannot go unamended.

How can the law be amended to plug the loopholes and reduce the harm our families and children continue to suffer? Please see the follow-up reports.

Note: Article 29-2 of the Act Governing Food Safety and Sanitation

"Those that do not conform to the sanitation, safety and quality standards set by the central competent authority under Article 10, or to

the names, specifications, scope of use and maximum limits of food additives set under Article 12, or that violate

the provisions of Article 13, Paragraph 2, or Article 14, Paragraph 1, shall be confiscated and destroyed. However, if after disinfection

or the adoption of appropriate safety measures they can still be used or may be reprocessed for use, the operator shall be notified to disinfect, reprocess or adopt appropriate safety measures within a specified period; if the operator fails to comply within the deadline, the goods shall be confiscated and destroyed."