Strawberries from five Japanese suppliers are banned from entering Taiwan from Saturday until Feb. 11 after multiple recent shipments failed to meet pesticide residue standards during border checks, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) said yesterday.
The agency had imposed the one-month ban because 10 out of 216, or 4.63 percent, of Japanese strawberry shipments since November have failed inspections, FDA Deputy Director-General Lin Chin-fu (林金富) told a press briefing.
The 10 shipments were from five suppliers, whose import applications would be suspended for one month, Lin said.
Photo courtesy of the Food and Drug Administration via CNA
“This marks the first time the FDA has imposed such a severe punishment on Japanese strawberries,” he said.
The FDA would also intensify its examination of all Japanese strawberries until April 30 by conducting on-site verification and analysis of samples, he said.
Seven other products failed inspections, including chocolate from San Francisco-based See’s Candy Shops Inc and pacifiers from Denmark.
The chocolates were rejected for containing excessive levels of sorbic acid, a food preservative, the FDA said, adding that they were destroyed on site.
The agency said it would increase inspection rates for the company’s products.
The FDA said that the pacifiers were destroyed on site or returned to the sender because they contained formaldehyde, which the WHO’s International Agency for Research on Cancer classifies as a Group 1 carcinogen.
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