Carefully check the labels of Halloween candies for potential allergens when trick-or-treating on Thursday next week, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) said yesterday.
Warnings in Mandarin must be displayed on the outer packaging of any packaged food product that contains any of the 11 ingredients that might trigger an allergic reaction, FDA Food Safety Division Deputy Director Shiau Huei-wen (蕭惠文) told a news conference in Taipei.
The 11 ingredients are crustaceans, sesame, cow milk, goat milk, fish, mango, eggs, gluten, peanuts, nuts and soybeans, Shiau said.
Photo: CNA
If a product uses sulfite additives during production and contains sulfur dioxide residues exceeding 10mg per kilogram, it must also have an allergen label, she added.
Asked what people who cannot read Chinese should do being unable to understand labeling, FDA Deputy Director-General Lin Chin-fu (林金富) said that they should check the outer packaging of food products, as it might include labels in foreign languages or images of allergens.
Meanwhile, Anny Hou (侯沂錚), a dietitian at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital, said that added sugar intake should not exceed 10 percent of a person’s total daily caloric intake.
If a child aged four to six consumes about 1,800 calories per day, then the recommended added sugar limit for them should be about 180 calories, equivalent to nine sugar cubes, she said.
Separately, Lin said that the FDA has reviewed all online shopping platforms in Taiwan and ordered them to stop selling “wax candy” products from China.
Deputy Minister of Health and Welfare Lin Ching-yi (林靜儀) previously said that “wax candy” — candies with an outer layer of wax wrapped around jam or syrup — raised food safety concerns.
She urged consumers to exercise caution before purchasing the products, as it remains uncertain whether they contain illegal additives.
Lin Chin-fu said that over the past three years, “not a single wax candy product from China has undergone customs declaration and inspection at Taiwan’s borders,” indicating that all such products in Taiwan have been imported illegally.
The FDA’s regulations do not apply to “wax candy” products purchased on foreign platforms such as Douyin (the Chinese version of TikTok) through parallel imports for personal use, Lin Chin-fu said.
The Taipei Zoo on Saturday said it would pursue legal action against a man who was filmed climbing over a railing to tease and feed spotted hyenas in their enclosure earlier that day. In videos uploaded to social media on Saturday, a man can be seen climbing over a protective railing and approaching a ledge above the zoo’s spotted hyena enclosure, before dropping unidentified objects down to two of the animals. The Taipei Zoo in a statement said the man’s actions were “extremely inappropriate and even illegal.” In addition to monitoring the hyenas’ health, the zoo would collect evidence provided by the public
A decision to describe a Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs statement on Singapore’s Taiwan policy as “erroneous” was made because the city-state has its own “one China policy” and has not followed Beijing’s “one China principle,” Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Tien Chung-kwang (田中光) said yesterday. It has been a longstanding practice for the People’s Republic of China (PRC) to speak on other countries’ behalf concerning Taiwan, Tien said. The latest example was a statement issued by the PRC after a meeting between Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財) and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) on the sidelines of the APEC summit
A road safety advocacy group yesterday called for reforms to the driver licensing and retraining system after a pedestrian was killed and 15 other people were injured in a two-bus collision in Taipei. “Taiwan’s driver’s licenses are among the easiest to obtain in the world, and there is no mandatory retraining system for drivers,” Taiwan Vision Zero Alliance, a group pushing to reduce pedestrian fatalities, said in a news release. Under the regulations, people who have held a standard car driver’s license for two years and have completed a driver training course are eligible to take a test
‘SIGN OF DANGER’: Beijing has never directly named Taiwanese leaders before, so China is saying that its actions are aimed at the DPP, a foundation official said National Security Bureau (NSB) Director-General Tsai Ming-yen (蔡明彥) yesterday accused Beijing of spreading propaganda, saying that Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) had singled out President William Lai (賴清德) in his meeting with US President Joe Biden when talking about those whose “true nature” seek Taiwanese independence. The Biden-Xi meeting took place on the sidelines of the APEC summit in Peru on Saturday. “If the US cares about maintaining peace across the Taiwan Strait, it is crucial that it sees clearly the true nature of Lai and the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) in seeking Taiwanese independence, handles the Taiwan question with extra
RSS