Taiwan’s Food and Drug Administration (FDA) says that 24 local businesses have been fined for importing Japanese food products with falsified place of origin labels.
Taiwan has banned food imports from five Japanese prefectures affected by the Fukushima disaster since 2011. It also requires food imports from Japan to come with proofs of origin and radiation inspection certificates.
Inspectors discovered in March that products were still being imported to Taiwan from the five Japanese provinces, but with falsified labels.
FDA official Wu Ming-mei said Wednesday that Taiwanese companies cannot shift the blame to Japanese exporters.
“A lot of Taiwanese importers are saying that the labels were attached by the Japanese exporters," said Wu. "But we don’t care what the [Japanese exporters] say, the Food Safety Law says that Taiwanese importers have to ascertain that the labels are correct, so Taiwanese businesses cannot use that as an excuse.”
Taiwan’s health ministry has levied a NT$30,000 (roughly US$1,000) fine for each batch of food imported from Japan with falsified labels. The total amount of fines is estimated at NT$15,390,000 (nearly US$500,000).