Hand-shaken tea spot checks: Taichung Pear Cafe chamomile, Tainan chrysanthemum, and herbal tea found with excessive pesticide residue

After the hand-shaken beverage scandal, health bureaus around the country launched investigations. Today (the 1st), both Taichung City and Tainan City conducted special sampling and testing of tea beverage businesses within their jurisdictions, and have already removed the problem products from shelves and sealed them. These goods came from Nantou, Kaohsiung and New Taipei City respectively, and the health bureaus of both cities have handed over the relevant information to the local health authorities for follow-up tracing.

Of the 45 commercially sold tea beverage raw materials in the Tainan City Health Bureau's second round of testing, 3 items failed on re-testing. These included fipronil exceeding the standard, 5 pesticide residues in herb tea (Qingcao tea), and the detection in chrysanthemum flowers of propargite, a pesticide that must not be present as any residue. The Tainan City Health Bureau pointed out that all non-compliant products were removed from shelves and sealed on April 28, and the case has been referred to the health bureaus of Nantou County and Kaohsiung City, where the upstream suppliers are located, to trace the subsequent sources.

Separately, at the Yezi Jing betel nut shop, the "chrysanthemum flowers" were found to contain 0.07 ppm of the pesticide propargite (standard: must not be detected) and the "herb tea leaves" were found to contain 5 residual pesticides: benomyl 0.07ppm (standard: 0.05ppm), chromafenozide 0.12ppm (standard: 0.05ppm), propamocarb 0.28ppm (standard: 0.05ppm), saijielong 0.38ppm (standard: 0.05ppm) and dimethomorph 0.11 ppm (standard: 0.05ppm), all sourced from Longda Chinese Medicine Shop and Boren Chinese Medicine Shop in Sanmin District, Kaohsiung City.