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Chiayi County chief invites I-Mei Foods general manager

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Chiayi County chief invites I-Mei Foods general manager

Chiayi County chief invites I-Mei Foods general manager

TAIPEI (Taiwan News) – As the agricultural county of Chiayi is preparing to open the nation’s first “Food Safety Building” next April, County Magistrate Chang Hwa-kuan invited “food safety’s model student,” I-Mei Foods Co. General Manager Luis Ko, to visit the region. In addition to wide-ranging discussions and exchanges of views, Chiayi County Agriculture Commissioner Lin Liang-mao accompanied Ko and his group on visits to some of the area’s most prominent producers of food specialties including mushrooms and white chicken meat. Ko praised Chang for having succeeded in transforming a county relatively poor in resources into such a successful and lively region. I-Mei Foods managed to survive the food safety scandals which hit other companies over the past few years thanks to its ownership of a food testing laboratory. As a result, the government in 2014 added a so-called “I-Mei clause” to the Act Governing Food Sanitation, demanding that about 70 food companies set up labs of their own in order to take more responsibility in preventing problematic food products from reaching the consumer. Ko warned against seeing tests as the solution to all food safety issues. “Testing is science, but taking samples is art,” he said. Even if you send a large quantity of the product to the laboratory, a lack of professional knowledge on the part of the tester could play a part in producing different results for the same batch, he said. The I-Mei general manager recommended a two-track system, with two research bodies independent of each other conducting the tests, a necessary method especially because of Taiwan’s hot and humid climate and because of varying standards at the laboratories. Chang compared the production of food to the manufacturing of chairs, where the product had to be made well right from the start in order to prevent legal action by dissatisfied customers. Ko pointed at the risk of “second-hand pesticides,” comparing them to “second-hand smoke” from cigarettes. At any stage of the food production process from planting to harvest and beyond, produce might get into contact with pesticides in the air or water, he said.