The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) yesterday said it has officially joined the International Coalition of Medicines Regulatory Authorities (ICMRA) under the name “Taiwan Food and Drug Administration, Chinese Taipei.”
The FDA has become an associate member of the ICMRA, after the coalition approved its application, filed last year, at a recent meeting, it said in a statement.
Founded in 2013, the ICMRA is an informal group of leaders of medicine regulators that provides strategic directions for enhanced collaboration and approaches to jointly address common challenges, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, it says on its Web site.
Photo: CNA
The ICMRA consists of 24 full members, including the USFDA and the Chinese National Medical Products Administration, and 15 associate members, including Taiwan.
The WHO is listed as an observer to the group.
The FDA applied to join the organization to learn from “other medicine regulatory authorities’ strategies in responding to current issues of concern,” the statement said.
As an associate member, the FDA would participate in all ICMRA working groups and initiatives, enabling it to learn about trends in global regulatory issues and exchange information on health policy with other regulatory agencies, it said.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs congratulated the FDA on becoming part of the ICMRA community.
The agency’s inclusion in the ICMRA indicates that Taiwan’s laws and regulations on food and drugs have been recognized globally, and that the government’s years-long strategy of pushing for Taiwan’s meaningful participation in the international community is on the right path, the ministry said in a separate statement.
Taiwan has been shut out of the WHO and other UN-affiliated entities because it is not a member of the UN, and efforts to take part as an observer have failed over the past few years because of China’s opposition.
In other news, the FDA yesterday said that the outcome of a specialist meeting yesterday afternoon to investigate the presence of banned meat leanness enhancing additive cimbuterol in a Taiwan Sugar Corp (Taisugar) pork product would be disclosed next month.
FDA Director-General Wu Shou-mei (吳秀梅) said that the Office of Food Safety would compile the outcomes of FDA meetings on the butchering-to-marketing process of the Taisugar product, and another meeting is to be held by the Ministry of Agriculture today focusing on livestock farms and slaughterhouses.
The specialist meeting was attended by Office of Food Safety Director Hsu Fu (許輔) and 13 other experts in the fields of food safety, toxicology, analytical chemistry and veterinary medicine, Wu said.
The outcomes would be released by the Cabinet next month, she said, without elaborating.
The issue surfaced when the Taichung Health Bureau on Feb. 2 reported that a sample of Taisugar’s “Pork Boston Butt, Sliced” product tested positive for traces of cimbuterol at 0.002 parts per million.
The presence of cimbuterol was confirmed in a test by the FDA on Feb. 6, but multiple tests on 91 pork products, including 12 from the same batch as the contaminated pork, had tested negative for cimbuterol as of Tuesday.
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