The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) intercepted cheese containing excessive levels of E. coli from France and substandard paper products from China as they entered Taiwan, according to the FDA’s Tuesday report.

The FDA’s Northern Taiwan Management Center Director Liu Fang-ming (劉芳銘) said the intercepted cheese, from the French dairy producer Beillevaire, tested positive for E. coli at a concentration between 150 and 1,100 per gram. All five samples tested positive for pathogenic E. coli. According to the Sanitation Standard for Microorganisms in Foods, no single sample should have a test value exceeding 100 per gram of E. coli and no pathogenic E. coli should be detected in cheese.

The entire 2.4-kilogram batch was ordered to be returned or destroyed. The FDA has upgraded inspections of the import company Gourmet's Partner’s products to batch-by-batch testing with a sampling rate of 100% due to repeated border inspection failures.

Six of the 1,461 batches of French cheeses inspected since mid-January were found to contain excessive amounts of E. coli, resulting in a failure rate of 0.4%.

The FDA reported that three batches of paper products from China also failed border inspections due to excessive levels of evaporation residue and chloroform-soluble substances. The first two batches were paper food containers declared by importing companies Easypack Enterprise and Tair Chu Enterprise, respectively. The third batch was baking paper declared by the company Full C-Pass. 

All three batches exceeded leaching test standards, and were ordered to be returned or destroyed. The FDA has also increased border inspections for products imported by the three companies.