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The Centre for Food Safety (CFS) announced today (May 29) results of chemical and microbiological tests on 366 samples of various types of Chinese breakfast items collected from different places such as Chinese restaurants, congee and noodle shops, local style restaurants, cooked food stalls and food factories.
Except for a sample of fried fritter, which was found to contain non-permitted preservative boric acid (1,000ppm), results for all the other samples were satisfactory.
In this project, the CFS targeted items which are commonly found in Chinese-style breakfasts. The samples included:
*¡@steamed food/steamed buns (such as steamed fresh prawn dumplings, sticky rice wrapped in lotus leaves, steamed barbecued pork buns and steamed lotus seed paste buns);
*¡@rice-rolls/congee/rice dumplings (including steamed rice-rolls with barbequed pork, fried fritters wrapped in rice-rolls, congee with dried fish and peanuts, "boat" congee, salted meat rice dumplings and "gan-shui" rice dumplings);
*¡@deep-fried/baked food (such as fried fritters and baked barbecued pork puffs);
*¡@desserts (like sponge cakes and egg tarts);
*¡@cattle offal/others (such as cattle tripe, beef omasum and Chinese sticky rice rolls).
Chemical analyses include colouring matters (such as Orange II and Rhodamine B) and preservatives (including benzoic acid, boric acid, salicylic acid and sulphur dioxide). Microbiological tests cover pathogenic bacteria such as Salmonella, Staphylococcus aureus and Bacillus cereus.
"The detected level of boric acid in the fried fritter sample is unlikely to pose an immediate health risk upon normal consumption. The fried fritter sample was collected from a food premises. The CFS has issued a warning letter to the operator and is taking follow-up action," a CFS spokesman said.
Ends/Thursday, May 29, 2008
Issued at HKT 16:36
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