Press Releases

SFH on contamination of Taiwan products

Following is the transcript of remarks (English portion) made by the Secretary for Food and Health, Dr York Chow, after attending the "World No Tobacco Day 2011 - Regional Launching and Award Ceremony" this morning (May 29):

Reporter: (on food contamination incidents in Taiwan)

Secretary for Food and Health: According to the information given by the Taiwan authority, the incident seems to be quite widespread in many aspects of food ingredients, involving not only drinks, but also drugs. Both the Department of Health and the Centre for Food Safety have escalated their vigilance in monitoring the situation, getting information both from the Taiwan authority as well as from the importers which actually import those products. If necessary, we can use our existing regulations to ban imports to ensure that those products would not be sold in the market.

Reporter: Should the public stop buying Taiwan made products?

Secretary for Food and Health: At the moment, most of the (contaminated) products are not sold in Hong Kong. Once they have been discovered, the retailers would always decide to take them down (the shelves). The communication between our departments and the retailers is actually very important. We will monitor the situation very closely and in case there is a market presence of these products and yet they are still being sold, then we will have to escalate the measures and perhaps will use the existing regulations to control the sale of these products.

(Please also refer to the Chinese portion of the transcript)


Ends/Sunday, May 29, 2011
Issued at HKT 15:35

NNNN