Taiwan FDA finds banned dye in dried tofu

Taiwan’s Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has found traces of banned industrial dyes in several dried tofu products, months after the country’s cooking oil scandal.

The FDA subsequently ordered all suspected products to be taken off shelves nationwide with immediate effect.

Taiwan’s acting FDA director-general Chiang Yu-mei was reported by Want China Times as saying that an investigation by the administration and local health officials had discovered at least four companies selling dried tofu products with dimethyl yellow, a cancer-causing agent in animals.

The source of the dye is reportedly a company in Tainan that supplied the emulsifier for stabilising the production of tofu skin, the main ingredient in dried tofu, and to give the finished product a more shiny and smooth look.

The company, known as Chien Hsin in Chinese, shipped 25,760kg of the dye between June and December to 11 tofu processors in six cities and counties-Yilan, Keelung, New Taipei, Taoyuan, Taichung, and Pingtung.

So far, around 2,311kg of tainted dried tofu of various flavours have been removed from shelves, reported Focus Taiwan.

The FDA has instructed all distributors of Chien Hsin products and its customers to report to local health departments the ingredients and other details of their products by the end of Wednesday and remove products from shelves by the end of Saturday.

Companies selling products with the banned ingredients after that deadline will have to pay a fine of up to $6.3m (NT$200m).

According to the FDA, Chien Hsin could face a fine between $1,000 and NT$99,800 (NT$30,000 to NT$3m) for failing to register ‘oily yellow powder’ as an ingredient in the emulsifier with the administration’s food ingredients registration platform.

It also faces another maximum fine of NT$3m for failing to report the actual ingredients of the product to health authorities upon inspection, along with another fine of up to NT$50m for selling edible products laced with banned food additives.