Pig farmers yesterday said that they would not rule out the possibility of seeking compensation from the Taichung City Government as they called on the central government to swiftly clarify whether a leanness-enhancing additive was found in a Taiwan Sugar Corp (Taisugar) pork product.
More tests are set to be conducted after conflicting reports about the presence of cimbuterol, a banned leanness-enhancing additive, in a Taisugar pork product.
The Ministry of Agriculture said it had found zero traces of the substance on Sunday.
Photo courtesy of the Taichung City Government
The Taichung Health Bureau yesterday reaffirmed the results of six tests it conducted as safety checks that confirmed the presence of cimbuterol in samples of frozen sliced Boston butt supplied by Taisugar.
On Friday last week, the bureau announced it had found 0.002 parts per million (ppm) of the additive in the samples.
While products from the same batch are being traced and recalled, government agencies have been conducting inspections and are investigating the source of the product.
Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Deputy Director-General Wang Der-yuan (王德原) yesterday said that the FDA had on Sunday collected three more samples of pork from the same batch tested by the bureau.
The three samples were tested according to the Ministry of Health and Welfare’s Method of Test for Veterinary Drug Residues in Foods — Test of Multiresidue Analysis of Beta-Agonists (食品中動物用藥殘留量檢驗方法－乙型受體素類多重殘留分析) for 21 types of beta-agonists, including cimbuterol, and the results all came back negative, he said.
The Executive Yuan’s Office of Food Safety on Sunday evening told a news conference that cimbuterol is a relatively expensive and rare drug, so there are no veterinary drugs that contain it or animal feed manufacturers that use it.
Office of Food Safety Director Hsu Fu (許輔) said that 45 specimens taken from pig farms, slaughterhouses and the same product batch collected by three ministries and Taisugar have all tested negative for beta-agonists.
Cimbuterol is an expensive substance usually only used as a standard reference material in laboratories, Deputy Minister of Health and Welfare Victor Wang (王必勝) said.
As the 0.002ppm found by the bureau is near the 0.001ppm limit of detection — the lowest quantity or concentration of a component that can be reliably identified using a given analytical method — the bureau should be extra careful when determining its test result, Wang said.
Bureau Director Tseng Tzu-chan (曾梓展) yesterday said the bureau had used the ministry’s official and recommended methods when testing the specimen, and of the six samples tested, the results all came back positive for cimbuterol.
One test using the official method found that the concentration level was 0.015ppm, 15 times the limit of detection, he said.
Asked whether the laboratory might have been contaminated and why the bureau rushed to announce its findings, Tseng said the lab obtained beta-agonist testing certification from the ministry in 2022, and 40 meat samples were tested with the same method last month, so if the lab was contaminated, the other meat products would also have tested positive for cimbuterol.
The bureau announced the test result as soon as possible, because its six tests all came back positive, and if the meat did contain cimbuterol, it did not want to wait for a possible re-examination to be conducted, he said.
As Taisugar has applied to re-examine the results, the city government has asked the FDA and Taisugar to join it in retesting the problematic samples, he said.
At a Chiayi County Government news conference yesterday, Republic of China Swine Association board member Lin Chiu-kuei (林秋桂) said that pork prices usually increase before the Lunar New Year holiday, but the Taichung City Government’s announcement caused pork wholesale prices to drop on Saturday.
The city government has harmed the animal husbandry industry in the name of food safety, so it should apologize to the public and compensate pig farmers for any losses, Lin said, adding that the association would not rule out demanding compensation from the city.
Separately yesterday, the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Democratic Progressive Party’s (DPP) legislative caucuses each held a news conference regarding the matter.
KMT lawmakers urged the central government to cooperate with the Taichung City Government to clarify the situation, instead of confronting it, saying that they must hurry to “mend the holes” in food safety.
DPP lawmakers said that food safety standards cannot be bent, but as the case has caused panic and hurt pig farmers, they hope the bureau can clarify the situation before the Lunar New Year holiday.
Taisugar has the right to file a lawsuit if it is confident its reputation has been wrongly tarnished, they said.
Additional reporting by Tsai Tsung-hsun
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