Chinese breeders may be feeding hairy crabs, also known as dazha crabs, with poisoned mice, two Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) lawmakers said yesterday, calling on health officials to implement stricter inspections of crab imports.
DPP Legislator Wu Ming-ming (吳明敏) said recent reports published by different media organizations claimed that about 2 billion mice around Dongting Lake in China had been poisoned with tetramine, a type of rat poison that has been involved in major food poisoning cases in China in recent years.
As Chinese breeders have previously been accused of feeding the carcasses of dead pigs or dogs to their hairy crabs, it's likely that the poisoned mice might have been used as feed, Wu said.
Another concern over the safety of hairy crabs is that their habitat is seriously affected by cyanotoxin pollution, which could lead to liver damage in humans, Wu said.
Wu said that Chinese hairy crabs come mainly from Dongting Lake in Hunan Province and Lake Tai in Jiangsu Province, which have both reported cases of contamination by cyanotoxin.
Chang Yeh-shen (張葉森), a doctor who also attended the press conference, said that Chinese breeders have used both hormones and steroids to accelerate the growth of their crabs.
It generally takes two years for a juvenile crab to grow big enough for market, but Chinese feeders can reduce this to one year with chemicals, Chang said.
"What worries us most are the poor food safety inspections conducted by China," Wu said.
It is very difficult to examine all the toxins contained in cyanotoxin and China's less than strict inspections of hairy crabs complicates the food safety problem, Wu said.
In 2004 and 2005, about 1,000 tonnes of hairy crabs were imported from China, DPP Legislator Tien Chiu-chin (
Last October, during the peak of the hairy crab season, metabolites of the banned antibiotic substance nitrofuran were found in batches of hairy crabs from China.
Tien urged the government to undertake stricter testing on imported hairy crabs and called on the public to consume red crabs grown in Taiwan instead of hairy crabs.
The Coast Guard Administration (CGA) and Chunghwa Telecom yesterday confirmed that an international undersea cable near Keelung Harbor had been cut by a Chinese ship, the Shunxin-39, a freighter registered in Cameroon. Chunghwa Telecom said the cable had its own backup equipment, and the incident would not affect telecommunications within Taiwan. The CGA said it dispatched a ship under its first fleet after receiving word of the incident and located the Shunxin-39 7 nautical miles (13km) north of Yehliu (野柳) at about 4:40pm on Friday. The CGA demanded that the Shunxin-39 return to seas closer to Keelung Harbor for investigation over the
National Kaohsiung University of Science and Technology (NKUST) yesterday promised it would increase oversight of use of Chinese in course materials, following a social media outcry over instances of simplified Chinese characters being used, including in a final exam. People on Threads wrote that simplified Chinese characters were used on a final exam and in a textbook for a translation course at the university, while the business card of a professor bore the words: “Taiwan Province, China.” Photographs of the exam, the textbook and the business card were posted with the comments. NKUST said that other members of the faculty did not see
An apartment building in New Taipei City’s Sanchong District (三重) collapsed last night after a nearby construction project earlier in the day allegedly caused it to tilt. Shortly after work began at 9am on an ongoing excavation of a construction site on Liuzhang Street (六張街), two neighboring apartment buildings tilted and cracked, leading to exterior tiles peeling off, city officials said. The fire department then dispatched personnel to help evacuate 22 residents from nine households. After the incident, the city government first filled the building at No. 190, which appeared to be more badly affected, with water to stabilize the
EARTHQUAKE: Taipei and New Taipei City accused a construction company of ignoring the Circular MRT’s original design, causing sections to shift by up to 92cm The Taipei and New Taipei City governments yesterday said they would seek NT$1.93 billion (US$58.6 million) in compensation from the company responsible for building the Circular MRT Line, following damage sustained during an earthquake in April last year that had shuttered a section for months. BES Engineering Corp, a listed company under Core Pacific Group, was accused of ignoring the original design when constructing the MRT line, resulting in negative shear strength resistance and causing sections of the rail line between Jhonghe (中和) and Banciao (板橋) districts to shift by up to 92cm during the April 3 earthquake. The pot bearings on
RSS