Food Safety Act Amendment Blocked by Ruling Party, Public Worried About Food Safety During Chinese New Year

Why is it so hard to let the public gather for a truly safe New Year's Eve reunion dinner?

On January 13, the Taipei City Department of Health released a survey of the New Year goods street, finding that the failure rate for sulfur dioxide residues in commercially sold daylily buds was as high as 38%. In addition, the legume products commonly found in New Year dishes raise doubts about genetic modification, and the springy hot pot ingredients may contain excessive phosphates. Food safety on the dining table depends on a strong and effective "Act Governing Food Sanitation and Safety Management" to serve as gatekeeper. Yet the revised draft of the new version of the "Food Sanitation Management Act" was boycotted by the ruling party and could not be passed in this legislative session, causing the public's expectation for strengthened food safety in the new year to fall through once again.

According to the second wave of inspection results for the New Year goods street announced by the Taipei City Department of Health, dried shrimp, broad beans, shredded squid, dried tofu, and daylily buds were found to exceed standards for sorbic acid (a preservative) and sulfur dioxide (a bleaching agent and preservative), respectively. Among them, of 50 samples of daylily buds tested, 18 exceeded the standard for sulfur dioxide. (See the Taipei City Department of Health website for the list of substandard daylily buds.)

Among these, sorbic acid and sulfur dioxide are single-ingredient food additives. The "Food Sanitation Management Act" stipulates that single-ingredient food additives must undergo inspection and registration, while compound food additives composed of single ingredients must be mandatorily registered on the Food and Drug Administration website, disclosing their ingredients.

After the toxic starch incident broke out last year, the Legislative Yuan quickly revised the "Food Sanitation Management Act" in May, sharply raising the penalty for food adulteration to 15 million. Unexpectedly, in October the Datong blended oil copper chlorophyll incident broke out, so the Legislative Yuan revised the "Food Sanitation Management Act" again in this session, especially strengthening the management of food additives and restoring inspection and registration for compound food additives such as preservatives, antioxidants, and bleaching agents, hoping to manage the flow of food additives from the source and reduce the proportion of substandard foods.

However, the new version of the "Food Sanitation Management Act" was suspected of being boycotted by the ruling party and was not placed on the agenda. Legislator Tien Chiu-chin, along with scholars and physicians, at the critical moment when only one day remained before the end of the Legislative Yuan session, called for changing the agenda so that the "Food Sanitation Management Act" could quickly undergo second and third reading; but due to cross-party negotiations, on the grounds that the schedule was too tight, the "Food Sanitation Management Act" was placed on the agenda for the next session, and deliberation is expected to begin only after March.

Preservatives, antioxidants, and bleaching agents restored to inspection and registration

Article 21 of the new version of the "Food Sanitation Management Act" stipulates that preservatives, antioxidants, and bleaching agents must complete inspection and registration before July 1, 2015, while other compound food additives shall, according to registration data, be submitted to the Food Safety Risk Assessment Advisory Council, which will decide the priority for inspection and registration according to risk level and propose a timetable for inspection and registration before July 1, 2015.

With the two revisions of the "Food Sanitation Management Act," legislators and the Food and Drug Administration have repeatedly wrestled over inspection and registration. The Food and Drug Administration believes that there are currently more than 200,000 entries of compound food additives in the country, and inspection and registration would be time-consuming; civil society groups, however, point out that after the abolition of compound additive inspection and registration in 2000, unscrupulous manufacturers mixed in illegal additives, and compound imports did not need to undergo any verification, leaving food safety full of loopholes.

Compound food additives are all around us. Last year, Chin Hui-min, director of the Nutrition Department at Taipei City Hospital, pointed out that fish balls and tempura among hot pot ingredients mostly contain phosphate additives so they taste springy and chewy. The thickeners, quality improvers, and swelling agents listed by manufacturers may be these compound phosphates.

Restoring inspection and registration in the new version of the "Food Sanitation Management Act" is a major initiative. It is understood that during cross-party negotiations, the Food and Drug Administration still hesitated repeatedly, and only after adding provisos such as review by the Food Advisory Committee and taking effect in 2015 did it finally concede; however, some scholars have already pointed out that the composition of the Food Advisory Committee is key. If it is not closely monitored, it may be controlled by the Food and Drug Administration, and inspection and registration cannot be implemented.

GM foods enter the parent law for the first time, but bulk labeling is limited to whole beans and soy milk

The new version of the "Food Sanitation Management Act" also brings genetically modified foods into the parent law for the first time. Current regulations on genetically modified foods are only an administrative order of the Food and Drug Administration. The new law explicitly states that genetically modified food raw materials "may not be manufactured, processed, blended, repackaged, imported, or exported without inspection and registration by the central competent authority and the issuance of a permit." They must also be clearly labeled. Guo Hua-ren, a professor in the Department of Agronomy at National Taiwan University who has long promoted legislation on GM foods, described it as "an opportunity for our country to patch legislation that has lagged behind Europe and Japan for ten years."

Taiwan imports 2.3 million tonnes of soybeans each year, nearly 90% of which are genetically modified. Apart from being used for oil pressing and feed, the rest mostly becomes the soy milk and tofu on our dining tables, but the risks of genetic modification remain unclear. Guo Hua-ren pointed out that Japan, South Korea, and Malaysia all eat non-GM soybeans, and only Taiwan, China treats whole soybeans as an important food source.

Bringing GM foods into the law sets a milestone for Taiwan, China's anti-GM movement, but the bill stipulates that GM foods must be labeled while also containing a proviso: "The specific food items under the preceding paragraph, the matters to be labeled, the methods, and the scope; and the specific bulk food items, the restriction methods, and the matters to be labeled shall be announced by the central competent authority."

Since packaged foods already must disclose in detail whether GM raw materials are used, the focus of the bill is on bulk foods. The Food and Drug Administration plans that bulk soy milk and bulk GM foods whose "original form" can be seen need to be labeled, for example soybeans packed in burlap sacks, while other processed GM products still need further discussion; initially, it also targets only operators registered as companies or factories. In other words, when people buy tofu at the traditional market, they still cannot know whether the raw material is GM soybeans.

Unable to make the agenda, the draft "Food Sanitation Management Act" may be reviewed as early as March

Although the content of the draft "Food Sanitation Management Act" still falls short of the demands of many legislators, it is already a breakthrough. The Executive Yuan, the Legislative Yuan, and civil society together proposed 50 versions in total. After article-by-article review on December 9 and 25 last year, only the issue of the burden of proof in food safety remained unsettled, and the rest had already passed first reading and been sent out of committee. However, the Legislative Yuan session ended on January 14, and the Procedure Committee last Tuesday did not place the "Food Sanitation Management Act" on the agenda, apparently because it was boycotted by ruling party legislators behind the scenes.

Tien Chiu-chin held a press conference on January 13, saying that for the "Food Sanitation Management Act," only the "burden of proof in food safety" still required cross-party negotiations, while everything else had consensus. Yet last Tuesday, the Procedure Committee chaired by Kuomintang legislator Wu Yu-sheng did not place the "Food Sanitation Management Act" on the agenda, and she questioned whether the Kuomintang was protecting unscrupulous manufacturers; but Kuomintang caucus whip Lin Te-fu responded that this session was busy handling the 2014 government budget and organizational restructuring laws, and there was absolutely no deliberate blocking. The "Food Sanitation Management Act" would be listed as a priority bill for the next session.

In the evening, the ruling and opposition parties negotiated the agenda again. Because time was too tight, it was confirmed that the "Food Sanitation Management Act" could not pass third reading in this session and must wait until the new session on February 21 for deliberation. It is expected that the "Food Sanitation Management Act" will restart only after March.