The safe limit of ractopamine in beef is 10ppb

The Food and Drug Administration of the Department of Health held a regular meeting of the "Food Hygiene Safety and Nutrition Advisory Council" today on the 31st. Regarding the safe limit of ractopamine residues in beef, the Food and Drug Administration issued a press release in the evening stating that the committee members believed that if the residual ractopamine in beef is compared with the 10 ppb approved by Codex, the health risk to the human body is within an acceptable range.

The Food and Drug Administration of the Department of Health held an expert meeting and issued a press release stating that the experts at the meeting believed that if the residual ractopamine in beef is compared with the 10 ppb approved by the Codex, the risk of health hazards to the human body is within an acceptable range.

The Food and Drug Administration stated that after the presidential decree is officially issued to implement the "Amendments to the Food Sanitation Management Act" and the Council of Agriculture lifts the ban on ractopamine in beef, it will take into account the suggestions of experts and scholars at this meeting, and determine the safe allowable amount of ractopamine in beef in accordance with administrative procedures and make a public announcement.

The press release pointed out that regarding the safe tolerance level of ractopamine, the committee agreed that under the condition that all beef consumed contained 10 ppb of ractopamine, the amount of ractopamine ingested through the diet would only account for 0.5% of the daily allowable intake (ADI) of 1 microgram/kg body weight/day, which is far below the acceptable daily amount.

The ADI value for ractopamine in Taiwan is set at 1 microgram/kg body weight/day. The FDA emphasizes that it is based on the conclusions of an expert meeting held by the FDA on April 11 this year. It uses long-term animal toxicology tests as the main evaluation basis, combined with consideration of the impact on high-risk human groups, and supplemented by the results of healthy human cardiovascular system tests and clinical trials of intravenous injections in patients with moderate to severe heart failure. It is believed that this is sufficient to serve as the basis for our country's health risk assessment of ractopamine residues in food.

The Food and Drug Administration said that after setting a safe tolerance in the future, it will strengthen the sampling of ractopamine at the border and in commercially available beef products to ensure that the public has the right to eat healthily and make choices within a safe tolerance.