Food Safety in Taiwan After the Plasticizer Debacle

It was merely by accident that the harmful practices of unscrupulous food industry producers came to light: A Ms. Yang in the Department of Health's Food and Drug Administration was routinely testing probiotic powders to see if they contained diet medicines. Much to her surprise, she found that the powders contained industrial-use plasticizers at levels exceeding 600 parts per million. At that concentration, a single dose contained an amount of plasticizer that was more than twice the recommended daily limit for infants.

The Department of Health (DOH) immediately notified prosecutors, and they tracked the problem to clouding agents made by Yushen Food, to which the company had illegally added the plasticizer diethylhexyl phthalate (DEHP). Prosecutors then discovered that Pin Han Perfumery, another major supplier to the food and cosmetics industry, had also added plasticizers to its clouding agents. The authorities immediately detained the CEOs of those companies and seized company property. In mid-June prosecutors asked for prison terms of over 20 years for those responsible, as well as NT$200 million in fines for Yushen.

In the wake of the plasticizer scandal, fresh fruit juices have become consumers' beverage of first choice.

Clouding agents or emulsifiers are added to fruit juices and sports drinks to create homogeneity by helping oils and water to mix. In order to reap slightly higher profits, the unprincipled producers replaced clouding agents made from palm oil and sunflower oil with chemical clouding agents that aren't safe for human consumption. In so doing, they knowingly broke the law.

There are seven or eight companies making clouding agents in Taiwan. Because Yushen and Pin Han sold theirs at very competitive prices, they directly supplied dozens of food and beverage manufacturers and biotech companies, and in turn several hundred downstream companies were also affected. Famous makers of drinks and health-food products such as President, Yes, King Car Food, and Chang Gung Biotech were forced to implement recalls. Even long-mar-keted drinks, such as Tsin Tsin's asparagus juice, were not immune.

Moreover, children's cough syrups, as well as enzyme powders, calcium tablets and other health-food products produced by some bio---------tech companies, were also contaminated. Parents are extremely anxious about the health of their children.

At the end of May, the DOH announced that from May 31 more than 10,000 supermarkets and wholesale distributors around Taiwan would have to acquire certification for five different kinds of food products to prove that they didn't contain DEHP. Otherwise, they wouldn't be able to put those products out for sale. What's more, Taiwan's Environmental Protection Administration plans to upgrade DEHP and seven other plasticizers from Class 4 to Class 1 toxins, after consultation with industry. That will mean that they can only be used in plastics production. Using them in cosmetics will require resubmitting applications.

Because some of the tainted products were exported-to more than 20 nations in all-the government notified the World Health Organization and potentially impacted nations.

In the wake of the plasticizer scandal, fresh fruit juices have become consumers' beverage of first choice.

The plasticizer scandal exposed large gaps in the nation's food safety controls.

Yeh Shin-cheng, head of the Graduate Institute of Environmental Education at National Taiwan Normal University, pointed out in a published article that fears about environmental hormones contaminating foods largely focused on bisphenol A (BPA) leaching from milk bottles or other food containers or DEHP leaching from PVC-based plastic wrap. Who would have thought that industrial-use plasticizers were being used by unscrupulous food manufacturers for many years as a raw ingredient of the actual food products? Imagine someone who is highly concerned about traces of pesticides in vegetables. Consequently, he cleans them carefully. Then imagine the absurdity of him seasoning the vegetables with soy sauce containing pesticides as a major ingredient. With this kind of atypical contamination, even if the food were inspected, it would likely pass because inspectors wouldn't be looking for contamination of that sort.

If there is a lesson to be learned in this tale, says Yeh, it's that the health authorities ought to maintain a fierce skepticism, developing new food inspection control procedures to ensure that soy sauce doesn't contain paint and that jellyfish skin doesn't contain plastic. They should take nothing for granted and pursue proactive measures.

In a case of being better late than -never, the Legislative Yuan passed amendments to the Food Hygiene Act in early June, with immediate effect. Henceforth, a business that illegally manufactures, processes, sales, imports or exports food that is harmful to human health will face a potential fine that has risen from the previous upper limit of NT$300,000 to NT$6 million. In serious cases, the company or factory could have its operating license suspended or revoked. If it were confirmed that the illegal actions harmed people's health, then those responsible could serve prison terms of up to seven years.

Food is one of people's primary needs, and the government is duty bound to protect its safety. But where should its efforts start?

Under the original version of the Food Hygiene Act, all food additives needed to be approved by health authorities. Only after getting that approval could those products be sold and used. But, in order to streamline the process, the DOH deemed that it was only necessary to register single-component ingredients and quantity limits. In 2000, the law was revised so that inspection wasn't necessary for spices or compound food additives (and clouding agents were classified as compound additives). With industry policing itself, the health -authorities would only step in if they saw an obvious need. This made things much more convenient for companies using food additives. With the excuse of not wanting to reveal their secrets to competitors, food companies stopped listing all their ingredients.

Secondly, the front-line inspection units employed by counties and municipalities are severely understaffed and underfunded. Government budgets devoted to regulating food safety amount to NT$34 per citizen in 2011. This is a great increase over previous years, but is still far below the average of NT$102 found in a survey of 19 cities in the United States, Canada, Japan and Korea.

In addition to food safety, the regulation of chemical toxins is also in urgent need of review.

Hsieh Herlin, the secretary-general of Taiwan Watch, recently pointed out in an article that the ROC's Toxic Chemical Substances Control Act divides chemicals into four different classes. Of the more than 100,000 chemical products on the market, most are toxic, but only 271 are listed as toxic by the Environmental Protection Administration, and 78 of those are listed as Class 4 substances, which are subject to looser controls. Because the EPA is short staffed and underfunded, it can't comprehensively regulate all the potential toxins that currently occupy a gray area. Consequently, there are large holes in the food safety net.

Wu Kuen-Yuh, a professor of public health at National Taiwan University, suggests that the ROC government model its food safety controls on the European Union's REACH (Registration, Evaluation, Authorization and Restriction of Chemicals) regulations. These require that chemicals be registered, with their uses and history of use in foods clearly listed, and with safety assessments performed. With such a system, when there are problems, the available data makes it easier to get to the source of the problem.

How should consumers, who are the biggest victims of this scandal, be compensated?

The Consumer Protection Commission (CPC) of the Executive Yuan has stated that whether or not the final product manufacturers were aware that suppliers were breaking the law, so long as they were selling unsafe products they are responsible for providing compensation under the Consumer Protection Law. So far consumer services centers around Taiwan have received several hundred appeals for compensation regarding food products tainted with plas-ti-cizers. These request that manufacturers compensate for the damage they have done to complainants' psychological and physical health, or ask that products be allowed to be returned for refunds. The CPC is providing assistance with the requests.

Unfortunately, because it's hard to prove the health effects of plasticizers in food in a short time, and because any single individual's case is weak and hard to prove, the manufacturers may well evade responsibility. Consequently, the CPC plans on using statistical methodologies in class-action lawsuits on consumers' behalf. If a certain group of consumers using a product has rates of illness significantly higher than normal, then those statistics can be used to prove a link between the illness and the plas-ti-cizer-tainted product.

As evidenced by the scandals involving melamine-tainted milk in mainland China, ractopamine-tainted pig feed in Taiwan, and vegetables tainted with E. coli in Europe, as well as this new scandal involving plasticizers in Taiwanese food and beverages, scholars argue that complex globalized food chains mean that contaminated food is no longer something an individual manufacturer or even an individual nation can confront on its own. A nation's duty has risen from "protecting against harm" to "preventing danger." The importance of moving food safety monitoring upstream must not be overlooked. Governments should implement "farm to table" monitoring systems with controls over everything from the production of raw materials, to supply chains, to how consumers obtain the final product.

This crisis, which has reaped a heavy toll on Taiwan, is gradually coming to a close. Taiwan's reputation as a great kingdom of food can eventually be reestablished. The crisis offers an opportunity to change for the better.