The top 10 imported Chinese medicines will require safety certification from Aug. 1, as well as improved labeling, according to the Department of Health (DOH).
Importers of these herbs and medicines will be required to provide certification, said Huang Lin-huang (黃林煌), chairman of the DOH’s Committee on Chinese Medicine and Pharmacy.
Chinese dates, astragalus root, dong quai (當歸) and Chinese liquorice will also be subjected to customs’ sample inspections because these four items often fail pesticide safety standards as well as showing traces of heavy metals and aflatoxins, Huang said.
The moves are part of a three-phase plan by the department to control the safety of Chinese herbs and to regulate medication sourcing.
The first phase includes requiring clearly labeled packaging for 324 of the approximately 600 kinds of Chinese herbs and medicinal products on the local market.
Phase two includes establishing inspection standards to check for abnormal levels of residues of things like heavy metals and aflatoxins in 91 types of herbs, while the final phase is to establish import source control mechanisms.
Huang also said that potentially harmful substances should carry a barcode so that their source can be verified and the public can be informed about the toxic properties of the medication.
Toxic substances are sometimes added to traditional Chinese medicines to give the recipient the feeling that the medicine is working.
Huang said the barcoding of poisonous substances, including arsenic, toad venom extract and realgar will be completed by next year.
Taiwan imports more than 600 Chinese medicinal products, more than 90 percent of which come from China. DOH statistics show that in 2009, Taiwan imported 3,086 tonnes of Chinese red dates, 2,935 tonnes of astralagus root, 2,041 tonnes of dong quai and 1,455 tonnes of Chinese liquorice.
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
REVENGE TRAVEL: A surge in ticket prices should ease this year, but inflation would likely keep tickets at a higher price than before the pandemic Scoot is to offer six additional flights between Singapore and Northeast Asia, with all routes transiting Taipei from April 1, as the budget airline continues to resume operations that were paused during the COVID-19 pandemic, a Scoot official said on Thursday. Vice president of sales Lee Yong Sin (李榮新) said at a gathering with reporters in Taipei that the number of flights from Singapore to Japan and South Korea with a stop in Taiwan would increase from 15 to 21 each week. That change means the number of the Singapore-Taiwan-Tokyo flights per week would increase from seven to 12, while Singapore-Taiwan-Seoul
POOR PREPARATION: Cultures can form on food that is out of refrigeration for too long and cooking does not reliably neutralize their toxins, an epidemiologist said Medical professionals yesterday said that suspected food poisoning deaths revolving around a restaurant at Far Eastern Department Store Xinyi A13 Store in Taipei could have been caused by one of several types of bacterium. Ho Mei-shang (何美鄉), an epidemiologist at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Biomedical Sciences, wrote on Facebook that the death of a 39-year-old customer of the restaurant suggests the toxin involved was either “highly potent or present in massive large quantities.” People who ate at the restaurant showed symptoms within hours of consuming the food, suggesting that the poisoning resulted from contamination by a toxin and not infection of the
BAD NEIGHBORS: China took fourth place among countries spreading disinformation, with Hong Kong being used as a hub to spread propaganda, a V-Dem study found Taiwan has been rated as the country most affected by disinformation for the 11th consecutive year in a study by the global research project Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem). The nation continues to be a target of disinformation originating from China, and Hong Kong is increasingly being used as a base from which to disseminate that disinformation, the report said. After Taiwan, Latvia and Palestine ranked second and third respectively, while Nicaragua, North Korea, Venezuela and China, in that order, were the countries that spread the most disinformation, the report said. Each country listed in the report was given a score,