Under the food safety storm, experts call for separate factory and license management of food additives and chemical raw materials
The hand-shaken tea storm unexpectedly sparked public concern about the safety of edible flowers. In addition to the rose flowers from British Blue being found to contain 11 pesticide residues including DDT, inspections by local health authorities found that chrysanthemum and jasmine flowers sold by many traditional Chinese medicine shops also failed the tests, and some operators illegally used petals intended for fragrance use in food. Experts have pointed out that this incident revealed a major loophole in border customs inspection, while Yeh Yen-po, Director of the Changhua County Health Bureau, called for food additive businesses and chemical raw material suppliers to implement "separate factories, separate licenses"; otherwise, local inspections will continue to face serious difficulties in the future.
Taking British Blue as an example, after health authorities traced the source to Kaohsiung-based Yuanyi Trading Company, they found that the operator had actually imported the flowers under the "dried spices" tariff code when clearing customs, thereby evading food inspection. On April 29, the Food and Drug Administration of the Ministry of Health and Welfare announced that flowers imported under the dried spices code must all be imported under the food code "F01", in an attempt to plug the loophole exposed by this storm.
Expert: Mandatory labeling of "edible" in the product name would allow special management by both exporting and importing countries
However, an expert who asked not to be named pointed out that among the customs import regulation codes there is still one called "F02". If an operator imports under this code, unless the product name specifically states "food", they can still evade inspection by customs officers. Take pork tripe as an example: it can be used as food and also as feed. When a product has more than 2 uses, operators may take the risk of importing it under the "F02" code, and in the end it is possible that a product clearly meant for other uses flows into the food supply. The Namchow oil products that sparked controversy last year were imported under this code.
Because most additive businesses clear customs under F02, experts believe that the FDA's revision this time requiring dried spices to be imported under the "F01" food code is a practice of "preferring to take the long road rather than the short one". "Why not directly require operators to mark 'edible' or 'non-edible' directly on the product name in the customs declaration? That way, not only would our country's customs inspectors pay special attention, but customs inspection at the export origin would also be stricter, and the shipping companies transporting the goods would also be especially careful, so that when the containers enter Taiwan, China they would not be handled carelessly."
Yeh Yen-po, Director of the Changhua County Health Bureau, called for the import, sale and manufacture of food additives and chemical raw materials to be managed under separate factories and separate licenses
Traditional Chinese medicine shops sell both medicines and foods, and the two fall under two different regulatory authorities with different inspection standards, which easily creates loopholes for mixed substitution (photo / Kuo Hsiu-chen)