Argentine garlic, Ukrainian sorghum among items seized at border

Taipei, March 19 (CNA) Large shipments of Argentine garlic and Ukrainian red sorghum were among the products recently intercepted at Taiwan's border for food safety violations, the Taiwan Food and Drug Administration (TFDA) said Tuesday.

In its weekly report on border seizures, the TFDA said it had seized a 26,000-kilogram shipment of garlic from Argentina last month after testing on samples detected the insecticides deltamethrin, fipronil, and permethrin at concentrations of 0.65, 0.003, and 0.6 parts per million.

In Taiwan, the maximum residue levels permitted for those three pesticides are 0.01, 0.001, and 0.5 ppm, respectively, the TFDA said.

A 25,020-kg shipment of red sorghum seeds from Ukraine imported by Ku Fu Chen Trading Co., a Tainan-based dry goods company, was also confiscated for containing the insecticide flubendiamide at a level of 0.4 ppm, according to the agency.

Taiwan has set residue limits for flubendiamide on a wide range of food products, but not sorghum, meaning that the default limit is zero.

Meanwhile, the TFDA said it had also seized a 48-kg shipment of a curry masala spice blend from India, which was found to contain the prohibited fumigant pesticide and known carcinogen ethylene oxide at a concentration of 167.8 milligrams per kg.

TFDA Deputy Director-General Lin Chin-fu (林金富) said that as this was the first violation by the product's importer -- a Hsinchu-based company called Om International -- the frequency of sample testing on its future shipments would be raised from the 2-10 percent range to 20-50 percent.

Yen Tzung-hai (顏宗海), an attending physician in the Department of Nephrology of Chang Gung Memorial Hospital in Linkou, said ethylene oxide is classified by the World Health Organization as a group 1 carcinogen (carcinogenic to humans).

At present, only a small number of countries, including the United States and Canada, allow for its use as a pesticide on food products such as spices and sesame seeds, Yen said.

Long-term exposure to ethylene oxide is associated with a higher risk of blood and lymphatic cancers and central and peripheral nervous system disorders, Yen said, adding that even low-level exposures may raise one's cancer risk.

The seized shipments were either returned or destroyed, according to the TFDA.