Boxes for potato chips stopped at border for banned chemical

Taipei, March 10 (CNA) A batch of cylindrical paper boxes from the Philippines, used for packing potato chips, was recently stopped at the border because the boxes contained a banned chemical, the Taiwan Food and Drug Administration (TFDA) said Tuesday.

The shipment of 560 kilograms of containers, supplied by Starkson Packaging Inc., were found to contain optical brighteners, which are banned for use under Taiwan's Sanitation Standards for Food Utensils, Containers and Packages, according to Liu Fang-ming (劉芳銘), director of the TFDA's Northern Taiwan Management Center.

The TFDA said the shipment will have to be returned to the vendor or destroyed.

The Taipei-based importer of the noncompliant containers will face enhanced inspections, with sampling rates raised to 20-50 percent of shipments, Liu said, noting it was the company's first violation in six months.

The TFDA also reported on Tuesday that 13 other imports were stopped at the border for failing safety inspections, including fresh hallabongs from South Korea and dried red dates from China.

The dates were found to contain 0.40 parts per million (ppm) of the pesticide trichlorfon, exceeding the legal limit of 0.05 ppm, and 13.09 ppm of dichlorvos, which is banned on red dates under Taiwan's Standards for Pesticide Residue Limits in Foods, Liu said.

Those items will also be returned to the vendor or destroyed.