Beef seized in Taipei over banned drug concerns

Want China Times, CNA 2013-10-30

City officials check beef at Mayfull Foods in Taipei. (Photo/CNA)

Taipei health authorities seized over 300 kilograms of beef potentially containing a banned drug Tuesday from a city importer accused of providing tainted beef to a local restaurant chain.

The officials raided Mayfull Foods in the city's Neihu district earlier in the day and seized the beef.

A nationwide recall of the questionable beef followed the discovery of the leanness-enhancing drug zilpaterol in beef when Taoyuan county health authorities checked an outlet of the Yuanshao restaurant chain in the northern county.

Yuanshao is a barbeque restaurant chain owned by Wowprime, a leading operator in Taiwan with interests spanning hot pot stores, the high-end Wang Steak brand, and Chamonix teppanyaki restaurants.

Wowprime said it had recalled and returned all of the questionable beef sold at Yuanshao stores nationwide, estimated at 203.4kg in total, to Mayfull by Oct. 26.

The Taipei health officials said all the seized beef at the Mayfull warehouse will be destroyed.

The beef found in the Taoyuan store was part of batches totaling 361.25kg imported by Mayfull from the United States in January, all of which was sold to Wowprime, according to Chiu Hsiu-yi, head of the Food and Drug Division under Taipei's Department of Health.

Wowprime said the questionable beef was sold only at Yuanshao outlets.

The group also said that only 33kg of the questionable beef had been sold since Sept. 2.

Taiwan only allows the leanness-enhancing drug ractopamine in US beef with a cap of residue levels at 10 parts per billion (ppb).

Zilpaterol is more toxic than ractopamine and may not be easily metabolized by animals, according to the health department, but it has been approved by the United States Food and Drug Administration as a supplement for cattle.

In the latest case, the residue level found in the tainted beef was a marginal 0.5 ppb and should pose only a low hazard to human health, the department said.

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