Mon, Sep 25, 2023 page3

• Egg prices rise amid import plan furor

  ‘LIKELY TO WORSEN’: Following controversies, Taiwanese have ‘serious’ doubts over imported eggs, an association said, as the FDA completed factory inspections

  • By Shelley Shan and Lee I-chia / Staff reporters
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  Questions over the quality of imported eggs have boosted the demand for domestically produced eggs and caused an increase in the retail egg price, the Taipei Egg Retailers’ Association said yesterday.

  “People now have serious doubts over the quality of imported eggs due to food safety issues that arose recently,” association chairman Lin Tien-lai (林天來) said.

  Controversy has surronded a special egg import program introduced by the Ministry of Agriculture to address a nationwide egg shortage earlier this year. The furor included the discovery that eggs imported from Brazil had an incorrect expiration date, and egg shipments from Brazil were found to contain florfenicol and chloramphenicol residues.

  

  Crates of eggs are pictured in an undated photograph.

  Photo: Taipei Times

  “As many primary and secondary schools have stopped using liquid eggs in school lunches, the nation’s demand for shell eggs has increased by about 400,000 per day,” Lin Tien-Lai said.

  Today, the retail egg price for consumers is to rise to NT$55 per 600g from NT$53, while the retail price at last production sites is scheduled to rise on Thursday to NT$45.5 per 600g from NT$43.5, the association said.

  The egg shortage is likely to worsen and continue for the rest of the year due to a decreased consumption of imported eggs and inadequate domestic egg production, Lin said, adding that retail prices might increase further.

  Separately, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) said it completed inspections at 59 liquid-egg processing factories launched on Thursday. Two factories failed the inspection for environmental hygiene and two items were found with labeling errors.

  The inspection was initiated as a handful of factories were reported last week to have mislabeled imported liquid egg products as “made in Taiwan.”

  According to the Regulations Governing the Determination of Country of Origin of Imported Goods (進口貨物原產地認定標準), eggs do not need “substantive transformation” to become liquid eggs, therefore the “country of origin” must list where the eggs were imported from, the FDA said.

  A total of 59 liquid-egg processing factories were inspected from Thursday to Saturday, and the manufacturing process and environmental hygiene of 56 factories meet the standards of the Regulations on Good Hygiene Practice for Food (食品良好衛生規範準則), while two failed and one was found only selling shell eggs, but not liquid eggs, it said.

  FDA Deputy Director Lin Chin-fu (林金富) said the two factories failed due to poor environmental hygiene, including dirty floor and wall corners, and door curtains that were unable to seal tight, so they are required to improve the issues within a given time, or they could face a fine between NT$60,000 and NT$200 million (US$1,868 and US$6.2 million).

  The FDA also conducted random inspection on the labeling of 97 liquid egg products, and 95 items among them passed the inspection, while two items failed to label the contents as “unsterilized” as required, so the factories were asked to fix the problem.

  Following a special project for enhanced inspections on shell eggs sold at retailers — including supermarkets, traditional markets and stores — across the nation, conducted by the FDA and local health departments, Lin Chin-fu said all 2,921 items inspected from Sept. 14 to Saturday last week passed the inspection.

  Eighty randomly selected egg items were also sent to laboratories to be tested for veterinary drug residues, and 49 items have passed the examination so far, while the others are still being tested, the FDA said.
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