As part of the Forward-looking Infrastructure Development Program, the government is promoting a food safety infrastructure plan to strengthen Taiwan's ability to ensure the safety of food products. Running from 2017 through 2025, the plan serves as an additional mechanism to the comprehensive five-point food safety policy already in place. Its goals are to strengthen border inspections, improve local government sampling and testing, and bolster the central government's R&D and food safety incident testing capabilities.
Five main components
■ Construct a modern national food and drug laboratory and administration and training building: Increase space set aside within the laboratory for a specialist food and drug product testing center to accommodate the need for various advanced experimental equipment, improve the laboratory testing environment and ensure the relevant specifications conform to international standards. Additionally, provide a base to train testing personnel working in local government health bureaus and private-sector laboratories.
■ Raise the effectiveness of the border inspection rapid customs clearance system: Enhance the effectiveness of the border inspection and customs clearance system, help port offices establish independent risk assessment mechanisms, improve automation of the document inspection system, and shorten customs clearance time for products.
■ Improve food safety management testing efficiency and quality at local health bureaus: Raise the percentage of self-conducted testing at local health bureaus, and have all 22 local health bureaus in Taiwan certified by the Ministry of Health and Welfare as food testing agencies to guarantee testing quality.
■ Strengthen the central government's food safety testing capabilities: Purchase high-precision, high-end testing equipment and establish a high-resolution mass spectrometry database to expand testing abilities for dangerous substances in foods. Develop related inspection techniques to improve testing abilities for pesticides, additives and genetically modified organisms in food. Use big data analysis to detect counterfeit food and pharmaceutical products.
■ Increase capacity and standardization of research and testing on foodborne pathogens and pharmaceuticals for emerging infectious diseases: Expand the capacities of existing biological laboratories and animal testing centers to augment the capabilities of national food and drug laboratories. Strengthen research on worldwide emerging foodborne pathogens and infectious diseases to assist the biotechnology industry's development of diagnostic reagents, treatments and preventative medicines, and increase its international competitiveness.