Inspections of pork products exported to Hong Kong found no ractopamine residue, the Consumers’ Foundation said yesterday.
The foundation made the remarks after Hong Kong’s local Chinese-language Wen Wei Po reported that Taiwanese pork products were found to contain excessive ractopamine residue.
The newspaper on June 3 said that five pork products — four that came directly from Taiwan, and one marked as “from Taiwan and Canada” — had been found to contain 4.4 to 27.6 times the accepted amount of ractopamine residue.
Photo courtesy of the Consumers’ Foundation via CNA
Among the products named in the report were those made by Hsin Tung Yang, the Black Bridge and A Chun Wan Na.
To allay food safety concerns, the foundation said that it immediately launched an inspection of the products mentioned in the report by conducting parallel sampling of those that are sold in Taiwan.
As one product mentioned is not sold in Taiwan, the foundation sampled the most similar product being sold in the nation, it said.
All five products inspected carried no traces of beta-agonists such as ractopamine or clenbuterol, foundation chairman Terry Huang (黃怡騰) said.
The foundation has reached out to the Wen Wei Po reporter who wrote the article, asking them to share their source, but had not received a reply, he added.
The Council of Agriculture also tested the products in the article, all of which did not contain ractopamine residue, foundation secretary-general Hsu Tse-yu (徐則鈺) said.
Hsu accused Wen Wei Po of printing a report that was borderline “fake news” and for baselessly slandering Taiwanese pork products, calling on the paper to issue an apology to the companies involved, as well as Taiwanese hog farmers.
The Food and Drug Administration said it would speak with the Hong Kong government through the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in Hong Kong, and that it is organizing local county officials to visit Hong Kong and inspect the products.
The foundation added that it planned to forward its findings to the consumer councils of Hong Kong and Macau.
The incident highlighted a lack of methodology for national inspections and standards for natural and processed pork goods, it said, urging the government to draft laws to solve the issue.
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