The Department of Health (DOH) yesterday said that some finished products such as mooncakes and coffee beverages made with imported toxic milk powder have already been sold and consumed.
All future dairy products imported from China, however, will be tested for the presence of melamine, officials said.
The DOH said the powder had not been made into any infant products in Taiwan, but that it had been sold to bakeries, farmers and biochemical companies in many parts of Taiwan to be put into products such as mooncakes, bread, canned coffee beverages, papaya milk beverages, calcium tablets and fertilizer.
The DOH has been able to locate and seal between 50 percent and 60 percent of the contaminated products, authorities said.
“On average, baked goods contain between 1 percent and 3 percent [of the toxic milk powder] and coffee beverages contain 1.5 percent at the most,” said Hsiao Tung-ming (蕭東銘), acting director of the Bureau of Food Safety.
“According to standards set by the European Food Safety Authority, 0.5mg of melamine is the tolerable daily intake for every kilogram of body weight per day,” said Lin Ja-liang (林杰樑), director of clinical toxicology at Chang Gung Memorial Hospital.
This means that a person who weighs 60kg would have to consume more than 200g of pure melamine, or “tens of kilograms of the contaminated milk powder” to die from an overdose.
Lin said the reason for kidney stones in infants in China was because “their kidneys are not fully developed yet and they don’t know how to tell their parents where they hurt,” adding that in Taiwan, because the toxic milk powder is only one of the many ingredients in food and beverage products, “chances [of overdose] are close to zero.”
For those who are still worried about having consumed the harmful substance, Lin’s advice is to detoxify by drinking lots of water.
The safest way is to drink enough water to produce 2000cc of urine, which would lead one to urinate about seven times a day.
“[Doing this] will rid the body of about 90 percent of all kidney stones under 0.5cm,” Lin said.
Lin also said that because the contaminated products “are already in our bodies,” authorities should react faster in the future to protect consumers.
“We will work with the Ministry of Economic Affairs to ensure that all dairy products imported from China have been tested for melamine before they enter our borders,” Hsiao said.
“If China kept the information to themselves, it would have been very difficult for us [to detect that products have been contaminated],” Hsiao said, adding that governmental agencies will work to set up preventative measures.
Control Yuan member Cheng Jen-hung (程仁宏) said yesterday that he would file an application at the Control Yuan today to initiate an investigation to determine if the Department of Health, the Ministry of Economic Affairs and the Council of Agriculture had neglected their duties in case.
In addition to Taipei City, the DOH said that they found the toxic milk powder had been sold in at least nine counties and cities, including Taichung City, Taipei County, Taoyuan County, Yunlin County, Chiayi County, Hualien County and Kaohsiung County.
GREAT POWER COMPETITION: Beijing views its military cooperation with Russia as a means to push back against the joint power of the US and its allies, an expert said A recent Sino-Russian joint air patrol conducted over the waters off Alaska was designed to counter the US military in the Pacific and demonstrated improved interoperability between Beijing’s and Moscow’s forces, a national security expert said. National Defense University associate professor Chen Yu-chen (陳育正) made the comment in an article published on Wednesday on the Web site of the Journal of the Chinese Communist Studies Institute. China and Russia sent four strategic bombers to patrol the waters of the northern Pacific and Bering Strait near Alaska in late June, one month after the two nations sent a combined flotilla of four warships
THE TOUR: Pope Francis has gone on a 12-day visit to Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, East Timor and Singapore. He was also invited to Taiwan The government yesterday welcomed Pope Francis to the Asia-Pacific region and said it would continue extending an invitation for him to visit Taiwan. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs made the remarks as Pope Francis began a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific on Monday. He is to travel about 33,000km by air to visit Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, East Timor and Singapore, and would arrive back in Rome on Friday next week. It would be the longest and most challenging trip of Francis’ 11-year papacy. The 87-year-old has had health issues over the past few years and now uses a wheelchair. The ministry said
‘LEADERS’: The report highlighted C.C. Wei’s management at TSMC, Lisa Su’s decisionmaking at AMD and the ‘rock star’ status of Nvidia’s Huang Time magazine on Thursday announced its list of the 100 most influential people in artificial intelligence (AI), which included Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC) chairman and chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家), Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) and AMD chair and CEO Lisa Su (蘇姿丰). The list is divided into four categories: Leaders, Innovators, Shapers and Thinkers. Wei and Huang were named in the Leaders category. Other notable figures in the Leaders category included Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Meta CEO and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. Su was listed in the Innovators category. Time highlighted Wei’s
EVERYONE’S ISSUE: Kim said that during a visit to Taiwan, she asked what would happen if China attacked, and was told that the global economy would shut down Taiwan is critical to the global economy, and its defense is a “here and now” issue, US Representative Young Kim said during a roundtable talk on Taiwan-US relations on Friday. Kim, who serves on the US House of Representatives’ Foreign Affairs Committee, held a roundtable talk titled “Global Ties, Local Impact: Why Taiwan Matters for California,” at Santiago Canyon College in Orange County, California. “Despite its small size and long distance from us, Taiwan’s cultural and economic importance is felt across our communities,” Kim said during her opening remarks. Stanford University researcher and lecturer Lanhee Chen (陳仁宜), lawyer Lin Ching-chi