Experts are to meet on Wednesday to discuss how the banned leanness-enhancing additive cimbuterol came to be found in a pork product made by state-owned Taiwan Sugar Co (Taisugar), the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) said on Friday.
FDA Deputy Director-General Lin Chin-fu (林金富) said the meeting would be held at 2pm, and experts in food safety, veterinary science and livestock management would be in attendance.
The incident came to light after the Taichung Health Bureau on Feb. 2 said that a sample of Taisugar’s “Pork Boston Butt, Sliced” at a General Welfare Service store in Taichung was found to contain 0.002 parts per million (ppm) of cimbuterol in a test conducted on Jan. 15.
Photo: Huang Shu-li, Taipei Times
The government and local health authorities across Taiwan have since conducted additional tests on pork products and as of Saturday last week, no trace of cimbuterol was found in 705 pork products tested.
The latest results announced by the FDA on Friday showed that no sign of cimbuterol was found in an additional 75 samples of Taisugar pork products that were examined by local health authorities.
The samples included three that were processed in the same batch as the tainted product, the FDA said.
However, cimbuterol was again detected — at 0.001 ppm — in a pack of pork after a retest was conducted, FDA Director-General Wu Show-mei (吳秀梅) said on Saturday last week.
ISOLATED
Minister of Health and Welfare Hsueh Jui-yuan (薛瑞元) at that time said that the tainted Taisugar pork was likely an isolated case.
Lin also said that Taisugar personnel, as well as staff from the Taichung Health Bureau, Ministry of Agriculture and the Office of Food Safety of the Executive Yuan would also attend the expert meeting.
In the wake of the incident, the government has stepped up sampling inspections of pork products on the market this year, doubling the number of scheduled annual tests from 2,000 to 4,000, he added.
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