FDA official demoted over Fukushima food
By Matthew Strong
Taiwan News, Staff Writer
2015-03-27 03:48 PM
Central News Agency
TAIPEI (Taiwan News) – A Food and Drug Administration official at a customs office in Keelung was the only person demoted to take responsibility for the appearance of food from banned areas in Japan, reports said Friday.
The FDA came under fire after an estimated 310 products from five Japanese prefectures affected by the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster were found to be for sale in Taiwan with doctored labels of origin.
In the aftermath of the outcry, the government said it was considering a request from the Japanese government to lift the ban on the products from the five areas.
FDA Director General Chiang Yu-mei announced Friday that she and North Taiwan top manager Feng Jun-lan had each asked for disciplinary measures against themselves, while a Keelung-based official in charge of custom checks surnamed Huang had been asked to leave his managerial position.
Later Friday, prosecutors from Taipei City and New Taipei City were reportedly raiding ten companies and four storage centers while preparing to question the top managers of the ten importers as witnesses. A total of 20 people were being interviewed Friday evening, reports said.
Midnight Friday evening was the deadline for the Japanese products potentially affected by radiation to be removed from shelves. The food, which ranged from noodles and soy sauce to biscuits and chocolates, had been relabeled with Chinese language texts claiming they were produced in Tokyo or in other areas away from the five prefectures, reports said.
By Friday afternoon, 401 items had tested negative for radiation, while 23,607 out of 30,821 items were suspected of having been imported from the blacklisted areas, reports said, forcing their immediate removal from store shelves.
The Taiwanese importers of the products blamed the problem on forgery by Japanese producers or exporters, saying they were victims of fraud too.
Several Japanese companies producing food in Taiwan said their products were all locally made and did not originate in the affected areas.
The fraud was originally discovered in February when an inspector ripped the label from a bottle of Kikkoman soy sauce imported from Japan, reports said. On the Chinese-language label, it said the sauce had been produced on the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido, but the Japanese-language label underneath named Chiba, one of the five prefectures on the banned list.
