The establishment of a comprehensive food safety inspection mechanism for imports from China will be high on the agenda of a new round of cross-strait negotiations scheduled for late next month or early November, Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) Vice Chairman Liu Teh-hsun (劉德勳) said.
Liu made the remarks on Thursday after the disclosure that 25 tonnes of tainted milk powder were imported from China on June 23 caused a panic over the weekend.
As China and Taiwan have different standard operating procedures for food inspection, Liu said, the two sides should negotiate common standards under the existing communication channels.
“At present, one urgent task for the Ministry of Economic Affairs is to integrate the food ingredient inspection regulations used by central and local government agencies,” Liu said. “We need to have unified and comprehensive food safety control standards before launching talks with China on the topic.”
Liu said the MAC, which coordinates the government’s policy toward China, had ordered its officials to immediately inform government agencies if they discover any similar incident in their research on the latest developments in China.
The directive was given in response to criticism that the MAC had failed to play an active role in helping other government agencies, such as the Department of Health and the ministry, to monitor the safety of food imports from China.
Taiwan did not begin to track tainted milk powder from China until after the Straits Exchange Foundation (SEF) received notice of the shipment from its Chinese counterpart, the Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait (ARATS).
“From now on, the MAC will seek detailed information from China about any suspected food poisoning or contamination cases reported there through the existing SEF-ARATS communication channels, in order to better protect public health,” Liu said.
In related news, Taipei-based President Chain Store Corp (統一超商) — the firm in charge of Seattle, Washington-based Starbucks operations in Taiwan, said yesterday that none of the 220 Starbucks outlets in Taiwan were serving drinks containing milk imported from China.
The milk served in the local stores all comes from either local dairy farms or New Zealand, the company said in the wake of reports that Starbucks cafes in China had stopped serving drinks containing milk.
ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY AFP
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