The Council of Agriculture plans to require registration and permits for imported animal fats and oils used in feed production

In light of the underground factory run by Kuo Lieh-cheng in Pingtung, which used recycled waste cooking oil, leather oil and swill oil to reprocess and then sell to factories producing animal fats and oils for feed and food, the Council of Agriculture today held an expert meeting for discussion, and will draft amendments to the national standards for animal fats and oils for feed, and require manufacturers to obtain registration certificates before they can import or manufacture animal fats and oils for feed.

Chu Ching-cheng, deputy director of the Council of Agriculture's Department of Animal Industry, said that after the swill oil incident broke out, the experts present held that whether it is waste cooking oil, leather oil or swill oil, none of it should flow into the production of animal fats and oils for feed, and even more so it should not flow into the production and refining of edible oils and fats.

In view of this, the experts present all agreed that the management intensity for factories producing animal fats and oils for feed should be raised, that manufacturers importing animal fats and oils for feed must obtain import registration certificates, and that domestic factories producing animal fats and oils for feed must also obtain manufacturing registration certificates.

Chu Ching-cheng said that in addition to requiring manufacturers to obtain registration certificates, the Council of Agriculture will also strengthen border management, tracking the source and flow of imported animal fats and oils for feed to prevent them from flowing into edible oil and fat factories. In addition, the Council of Agriculture will set out regulations for the establishment standards, sanitation conditions and product quality of factories producing animal fats and oils for feed.

The experts present also held that the current national CNS standards for animal fats and oils for feed need to be reviewed. Chu Ching-cheng relayed that last week the Council of Agriculture commissioned the local agriculture bureau to test the animal fats and oils of Pingtung's Chin Wei Company and its downstream feed factories, and detected harmful substances such as heavy metals, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) and benzopyrene, and speculated that this was caused by the admixture of waste recycled cooking oil.

But as for how to revise the CNS standards for animal fats and oils for feed, Chu Ching-cheng said it is still necessary to refer to the relevant inspection standards of the European Union, the United States, Japan and other countries, and align with international practice; otherwise, if the standards are set too high, causing foreign animal fats and oils for feed to fail to meet our country's standards and be banned from import, it would result in no animal fats and oils for feed being available domestically, or would in disguised form create a trade barrier, violating the spirit of the WTO.

Chu Ching-cheng said that today's expert meeting had originally invited 9 experts, of whom 2 took leave; the participants were mainly representatives from the Department of Animal Industry, the Fisheries Agency, the Taiwan Agricultural Research Institute, the Taiwan Livestock Research Institute, the Livestock Research Institute, the Fisheries Research Institute, the Taiwan Agricultural Chemicals and Toxic Substances Research Institute, the Taiwan Feed Industry Association, the Taipei Feed and Animal Drug Merchants Association, National Taiwan University and National Chung Hsing University, spanning the fields of food processing, animal nutrition and physiology, and feed administrative management.