Radio Taiwan Internatinal
Date: 19 June, 2020
By: John Van Trieste

As Taiwan prepares to celebrate the Dragon Boat Festival, its local health departments are on the alert for festive treats that fail to meet food safety standards.

The early-summer Dragon Boat Festival will be here next week, and that means one thing- zongzi, or balls of glutinous rice wrapped in leaves with other ingredients and steamed. Vendors across Taiwan are gearing up to meet demand for these seasonal goodies.

But consumers should choose their zongzi carefully– testing by the Taichung health department has found that frozen zongzi on sale at a local supermarket contained a concentration of E. coli 110 times above the limit set by food safety standards. Fortunately, this product was the only one among the 61 supermarket zongzi the department tested to fail inspection. It was quickly removed from shelves.    [FULL  STORY]