More than 300 food products thought to have been imported under false pretenses have cleared radiation testing, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) reported yesterday, as more potentially problematic products await testing.
The products were on a growing list of items thought to have been illegally imported from five Japanese prefectures near the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant.
The number of Japanese food products subjected to testing for radioactive content exceeds the list of food items believed to have been imported to Taiwan with false origin labeling, FDA senior specialist Wang Te-yuan (王德原) yesterday morning told a news conference in Taipei.
As of 10am yesterday, 286 food products imported by 13 Taiwanese companies were thought to have been manufactured in Fukushima, Ibaraki, Tochigi, Gunma or Chiba prefectures. All foods from the region have been barred from import since the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant disaster in March 2011.
Six products were removed from the list yesterday after they were confirmed to have been produced outside of the five prefectures — or were repeats of items already included on the list, Wang said.
A total of 333 food products have passed the radioactive testing conducted by the Atomic Energy Council, up from 193 on Wednesday, Wang said, adding that all potentially contaminated products are legally required to be pulled off store shelves before today as a precautionary measure.
Under the current law, individuals or companies who import food items produced in the five Japanese prefectures or who file fraudulent customs declaration papers could face a fine ranging from NT$30,000 to NT$3 million (US$955 to US$95,526).
The radiation scare originated from the administration’s discovery earlier last month of two soy sauce products imported by a trading firm based in Taipei.
The items’ Chinese-language origin labels indicated that they were produced in Tokyo, but the Japanese labels attached underneath suggested they were actually manufactured in Chiba and Gunma, prompting a wider investigation of imported Japanese foods.
Turning to some implicated companies’ denial of responsibility for the fabricated origin labels, Wang said they would be spared from an inevitable fate of a permanent recall and destruction of their products — which are only subjected to a preventive recall at the moment — if they manage to obtain a place of origin certificate from the Japanese government.
A total of 104.4 tonnes of allegedly illegally imported foodstuffs have been sealed and confiscated thus far, pending further investigation.
Police have issued warnings against traveling to Cambodia or Thailand when others have paid for the travel fare in light of increasing cases of teenagers, middle-aged and elderly people being tricked into traveling to these countries and then being held for ransom. Recounting their ordeal, one victim on Monday said she was asked by a friend to visit Thailand and help set up a bank account there, for which they would be paid NT$70,000 to NT$100,000 (US$2,136 to US$3,051). The victim said she had not found it strange that her friend was not coming along on the trip, adding that when she
TRAGEDY: An expert said that the incident was uncommon as the chance of a ground crew member being sucked into an IDF engine was ‘minuscule’ A master sergeant yesterday morning died after she was sucked into an engine during a routine inspection of a fighter jet at an air base in Taichung, the Air Force Command Headquarters said. The officer, surnamed Hu (胡), was conducting final landing checks at Ching Chuan Kang (清泉崗) Air Base when she was pulled into the jet’s engine for unknown reasons, the air force said in a news release. She was transported to a hospital for emergency treatment, but could not be revived, it said. The air force expressed its deepest sympathies over the incident, and vowed to work with authorities as they
A tourist who was struck and injured by a train in a scenic area of New Taipei City’s Pingsi District (平溪) on Monday might be fined for trespassing on the tracks, the Railway Police Bureau said yesterday. The New Taipei City Fire Department said it received a call at 4:37pm on Monday about an incident in Shifen (十分), a tourist destination on the Pingsi Railway Line. After arriving on the scene, paramedics treated a woman in her 30s for a 3cm to 5cm laceration on her head, the department said. She was taken to a hospital in Keelung, it said. Surveillance footage from a
INFRASTRUCTURE: Work on the second segment, from Kaohsiung to Pingtung, is expected to begin in 2028 and be completed by 2039, the railway bureau said Planned high-speed rail (HSR) extensions would blanket Taiwan proper in four 90-minute commute blocs to facilitate regional economic and livelihood integration, Railway Bureau Deputy Director-General Yang Cheng-chun (楊正君) said in an interview published yesterday. A project to extend the high-speed rail from Zuoying Station in Kaohsiung to Pingtung County’s Lioukuaicuo Township (六塊厝) is the first part of the bureau’s greater plan to expand rail coverage, he told the Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times). The bureau’s long-term plan is to build a loop to circle Taiwan proper that would consist of four sections running from Taipei to Hualien, Hualien to
RSS