Health
In 2001 the United Kingdom Food Standards Agency found in tests of various oyster sauces and soy sauces that some 22% of samples contained a chemical called 3-MCPD (3-monochloropropane-1,2-diol) at levels considerably higher than those deemed safe by the European Union. About two-thirds of these samples also contained a second chemical called 1,3-DCP (1,3-dichloropropane-2-ol) which experts advise should not be present at any levels in food. Both chemicals have the potential to cause cancer and the Agency recommended that the affected products be withdrawn from shelves and avoided.
The joint Australia New Zealand Food Authority (ANZFA) said it had taken emergency action to amend its food standards code to set a limit for 3-MCPD in soy sauce of 0.02 milligrams per kilogram, in line with European Commission standards which come into force in the EU in April 2002.
Britain's Food Standards Agency (FSA) singled out brands and products imported from Thailand, China, Hong Kong and Taiwan. Brands named in the British warning include Golden Mountain, King Imperial, Pearl River Bridge, Jammy Chai, Lee Kum Kee, Golden Mark, Kimlan, Golden Swan, Sinsin, Tung Chun and Wanjasham soy sauce.
In July 2001, the FSA issued another statement clearing Lee Kum Kee's name after the company produced laboratory certificates from accredited, reputable laboratories. These certificates show that Lee Kum Kee products now comply with the proposed EU limit for 3-MCPD.
Read more about this topic: Oyster Sauce
Famous quotes containing the word health:
“The same soil is good for men and for trees. A man’s health requires as many acres of meadow to his prospect as his farm does loads of muck.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“To get time for civic work, for exercise, for neighborhood projects, reading or meditation, or just plain time to themselves, mothers need to hold out against the fairly recent but surprisingly entrenched myth that “good mothers” are constantly with their children. They will have to speak out at last about the demoralizing effect of spending day after day with small children, no matter how much they love them.”
—Wendy Coppedge Sanford. Ourselves and Our Children, by Boston Women’s Health Book Collective, introduction (1978)
“He had had much experience of physicians, and said, “the only way to keep your health is to eat what you don’t want, drink what you don’t like, and do what you’d druther not.””
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)