March 19, 2012

Taiwan to inspect US, Canada, Nicaragua beef cargoes

Beef imported from US, Canada and Nicaragua will be subjected to shipment-by-shipment checks at a 100% rate as part of Taiwan's efforts to address the latest food crisis, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) said Saturday (Mar 17).

FDA Director-General Kang Jaw-jou said the new measure, to take effect next week, will target those countries and their products that have been found in violation of Taiwan's zero-tolerance policy on residues of leanness-enhancing drugs in beef since January 1, 2011. All other countries and products will remain subject to the regular 5% examination of shipments, he said.

The countries and products that will be checked at a rate of 100% include beef from the US, Canada and Nicaragua and beef tendons from the US, Panama and Australia.

Vice Premier Jiang Yi-huah said recently that a batch-by-batch examination policy could sharply increase the need for warehousing, and that the DOH and Finance Ministry should carefully plan a comprehensive examination process to avoid delayed custom clearance of products.

Taiwan imports about 10,000 shipments of beef per year from the US, according to Kang.

Based on a calculation of a maximum 33 shipments per day and considering that some products would not require testing, Taiwan's national and private labs should be able to handle the volume, Kang said.

The new measure comes in the wake of recent discoveries of toxic leanness-enhancing drugs in some imported beef, reports that some locally produced pork products have also been found to contain banned drugs, and outbreaks of a highly pathogenic strain of the H5N2 avian influenza virus on chicken farms in central and southern Taiwan.