by Homerun Nievera | VigorBuddy.com |
Hong Kong | The Standard reported that the Wellcome supermarket chain here has pulled out two oatmeal brands from its shelves after Taiwan’s Food and Drug Administration announced that tests on 36 oatmeal products showed glyphosate (a herbicide) in 10 of them, including 4 variants of the popular Quaker brand.
Also among the other oat brands mentioned were Bob’s Red Hill instant rolled oats and Fifty 50 Low Hearty Cut Oatmeal which are available in Hong Kong, but not known to be available in the Philippines.
Some of the Quaker products are manufactured in Taiwan by Standard Food, wherein the brands that were found to have high levels of glyphosate had reportedly been produced in the United States and imported into Taiwan.
According to the report, Standard Food said that it’s Quaker variants were imported mainly from Australia and are supposedly different from those made in the U.S. and as reported in Taiwan and Hong Kong news.
According to Wang Teh-yuan, deputy director of the FDA’s Northern Center, the current maximum level of glyphosate residues allowed in foods is 30 ppm in the United States, 20 ppm in Japan and the European Union, 15 ppm in Canada and 0.1 ppm in Australia.
In Hong Kong, The Standard newspaper reported that 210 oatmeal samples tested from 2013 to March 2016 by the local Centre for Food Safety did not contain glyphosate. Glyphosate causes cancer. This was said by William Chui Chun-ming of the University of Hong Kong’s Department of Pharmacology. He, however, added that in the European Union, there was no evidence on glyphosate being carcinogenic.
A spokeswoman from Hong Kong’s Centre for Food Safety said it was still waiting for more information from Taiwan authorities on the issue. (With report from Kenneth Lay of Singtao News Corp.)
Sources: The Standard, Focus Taiwan
