In its second round of tea drink tests this month, the Tainan City Government Department of Health yesterday said it found 6 percent of the beverages to be tainted with pesticide residue.
The department tested a total of 45 samples on Thursday last week, it said.
Five drinks were from tea drink chain 50 Lan (50嵐); 21 from San Ching Tea Manufacturing Co (三清製茶); 10 from Sung Ho Tea Factory (松禾茶廠); and nine from other manufacturers, it said.
Photo: CNA
San Ching Tea is the upstream supplier for 50 Lan, a chain with more than 500 branches that became embroiled in an ongoing pesticide scare after a drink was found to contain excessive levels of fipronil, an insecticide.
Sung Ho is the supplier for tea store chain A Tea, whose black tea product last week was discovered to contain 0.005 parts per million (ppm) of fipronil, higher than the government’s maximum permissible level of 0.002ppm in products intended for human consumption.
“Of the 45 tested samples, only three were found to be tainted with excessive levels of pesticides, including a Ceylon black tea beverage, which had 0.004ppm of fipronil; a chrysanthemum tea drink, which contained the banned pesticide propargite at a level of 0.07ppm; and a Chinese herbal tea beverage, which was contaminated with five pesticides,” the department said.
Manufacturers of the deficient products were ordered to remove the tea leaves from store shelves until the results of a retest are available, the department said.
As of yesterday, a total of 861kg of Ceylon black tea leaves, 1.65kg of dried chrysanthemum flower buds and 144kg of Chinese herbal tea had been removed from store shelves.
The department added that all of the samples from the three companies conformed to regulations.
It is the second such test conducted by the department since a pesticide scare revolving around tea store chain Stornaway (英國藍) erupted earlier this month.
Stornaway’s 94 domestic branches were temporarily shut down after the ingredients of several of the company’s tea drinks were found to be tainted with high levels of pesticides.
The first test was conducted between April 17 and Wednesday last week, and found excessive pesticide reside in four of the 44 tested tea leaf samples.
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