- Date:2021-02-08
- Department:Evaluation Management Division
Each link of food safety needs to be closely interlinked and effectively managed from farm to table. Since its establishment at the end of December 2016, the Toxic and Chemical Substances Bureau of the Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) has continued to work with the Ministry of Health and Welfare and the Council of Agriculture to protect the food production environment, from the environmental and chemical raw material industries at the source of the food chain, agricultural and livestock products at the production end to products at the market end, from farm to table, with inter-ministerial cooperation to protect the producers’ rights and consumer health.
The EPA states that the three ministries will hold quarterly a “coordination meeting on environmental protection and food safety,” which are co-chaired by the deputy heads, to timely discuss environmental protection and food safety information, and to have deployment in advance in the environmental aspect and continuously monitor high-risk areas. If contamination risks are found in the environment, agricultural and livestock products or production processes of food, inter-ministerial notification will be made immediately for joint monitoring, traceability sampling or emergency response to ensure safety in the production environment of the agricultural and livestock products and food.
In addition, with regard to source control of chemical substances with food safety risks, the EPA completed more than 3,000 guidance visits to domestic chemical raw material operators every year from 2017 to 2020, guiding the operators’ implementation of self-management, and cooperated across ministries to handle folk festival projects of joint inspection and guidance. In 2020, 124 vendors who sell both chemical raw material and food additives that have high food safety risks were screened to receive joint inspections.
The EPA points out that in order to strengthen the management responsibility of upstream chemical substance operators with food safety risk concerns and further prevent the systematic inflow of these chemicals to the food chain, 20 chemical substances (27 items) with food safety risk concerns, such as rhodamine B, Sudan pigment, etc., have been listed as Class IV toxic chemical substances. The EPA also completed and promulgated the amendment to the "Toxic and Concerned Chemical Substances Control Act" on January 16, 2019, adding a new chapter on "concerned chemical substances," to continuously assess chemical substances with food safety risk concerns and discuss management.
The EPA stresses that inter-ministerial cooperation will continue this year, from farm to table, to strengthen the production management of all links in the food chain, and to avoid food contamination in the production process, protecting people’s health for people to spend good new year holidays with peace of mind and health.
