The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has banned the importation of cherries from four companies in the US for a month, after 11 batches of the fruit failed border inspections due to excessive pesticide residues, it said yesterday.
Thirty-three batches of cherries from the US have failed inspections in the past six months, the agency said.
The FDA’s weekly report on border inspections released yesterday showed 20 items that failed the latest inspections, including the US cherries, which contained mefentrifluconazole levels exceeding the 0.01 parts per million limit.
Photo: Wu Liang-yi, Taipei Times
Other items included mixed spices from Italy and truffles from Bulgaria with heavy metal contamination; banana paste from the Philippines containing excessive amounts of a sweetener; an instant noodle product from Vietnam containing excessive preservatives; and frozen chopped spinach and frozen cubed Chinese water chestnut from China, blueberries from Canada, romaine lettuce from Vietnam and an assorted cheese product from the US that contained excessive pesticide residues.
The items have been returned or destroyed after failing border inspections, the agency said.
FDA Deputy Director Lin Chin-fu (林金富) said that the batches of US cherries that have failed inspection in the past six months were from four companies.
“The FDA will temporarily refuse to accept import inspection applications from these four companies for a month — from Aug. 21 until Sept. 20,” he said.
The US companies are BV Farms Inc, Chelan Fresh Marketing, Gebbers Farms and Northern Fruit Co, the FDA said.
In addition to informing the companies by letter about the ban, the FDA also notified the American Institute in Taiwan, asking it to respond by Sept. 5, Lin said.
A total of 6,023.98 tonnes of US cherries in 1,883 batches have been inspected at the border this year, and as of Tuesday last week, 296.33 tonnes from 33 batches failed inspections, FDA data showed.
Foreign tourists who purchase a seven-day Taiwan Pass are to get a second one free of charge as part of a government bid to boost tourism, the Tourism Administration said yesterday. A pair of Taiwan Passes is priced at NT$5,000 (US$156.44), an agency staff member said, adding that the passes can be used separately. The pass can be used in many of Taiwan’s major cities and to travel to several tourist resorts. It expires seven days after it is first used. The pass is a three-in-one package covering the high-speed rail system, mass rapid transport (MRT) services and the Taiwan Tourist Shuttle services,
Drinking a lot of water or milk would not help a person who has ingested terbufos, a toxic chemical that has been identified as the likely cause of three deaths, a health expert said yesterday. An 83-year-old woman surnamed Tseng (曾) and two others died this week after eating millet dumplings with snails that Tseng had made. Tseng died on Tuesday and others ate the leftovers when they went to her home to mourn her death that evening. Twelve people became ill after eating the dumplings following Tseng’s death. Their symptoms included vomiting and convulsions. Six were hospitalized, with two of them
DIVA-READY: The city’s deadline for the repairs is one day before pop star Jody Chiang is to perform at the Taipei Dome for the city’s Double Ten National Day celebrations The Taipei City Government has asked Farglory Group (遠雄集團) to repair serious water leaks in the Taipei Dome before Friday next week, Taipei Mayor Chiang Wan-an (蔣萬安) said yesterday, following complaints that many areas at the stadium were leaking during two baseball games over the weekend. The dome on Saturday and Sunday hosted two games in tribute to CTBC Brothers’ star Chou Szu-chi (周思齊) ahead of his retirement from the CPBL. The games each attracted about 40,000 people, filling the stadium to capacity. However, amid heavy rain, many people reported water leaking on some seats, at the entrance and exit areas, and the
BIG collection: The herbarium holds more than 560,000 specimens, from the Japanese colonial period to the present, including the Wulai azalea, which is now extinct in the wild The largest collection of plant specimens in Taiwan, the Taipei Botanical Garden’s herbarium, is celebrating its 100th anniversary with an exhibition that opened on Friday. The herbarium provides critical historical documents for botanists and is the first of its kind in Taiwan, Taiwan Forestry Research Institute director Tseng Yen-hsueh (曾彥學) said. It is housed in a two-story red brick building, which opened during 1924. At the time, it stored 30,000 plant specimens from almost 6,000 species, including Taiwanese plant samples collected by Tomitaro Makino, the “father of Japanese botany,” Tseng said. The herbarium collection has grown in the century since its