In Taiwan, the Department of Health (DOH) Minister Yeh Ching-chuan said a sweeping examination of cooking oil used by 1,580 restaurants and samples from oil producers and importers shows no traces of the toxic heavy metal arsenic.
He assured consumers that they need not worry about the safety of cooking oil and foods because the cases of arsenic-laced foods were most likely isolated cases involving only a couple of restaurants in Taipei County.
But government agencies and restaurants need to pay closer attention to problems concerning the lax changing of cooking oil and the high acid value in oil products, Yeh stressed.
Yeh said tests of oil samples gathered from 1,580 restaurants — with chain restaurants accounting for 44 percent of the total — around Taiwan during the period of June 26 to July 8 have been completed.
The results show that 7.2 percent of the chain restaurants failed tests for high acid value, while failures for independent restaurants reached a similar proportion of 6.6 percent.
But none of the samples show excessive arsenic content, he stressed.
Earlier, DOH had announced that oil samples from both McDonald's and Domino's Pizza were found to contain traces of arsenic above the limit of 0.1 ppm.