Food Processing & Technology

Soy is a legume first cultivated in eastern Asia at least 2, 700 years ago. Soy is used to make a variety of foods like tofu, soymilk and meat substitutes in Taiwan. In 2015, Taiwan imported 2.6 million metric tons of soybeans; of that 98% was biotech soybeans. According to the Council of Agriculture (COA), 13% of the soybean was used for feed, 12% for food and 75% for oil in Taiwan. The Taiwan Food and Drug Administration (TFDA) formulated the GM food safety assessment methods in 2000. As of July 31, 2016, 116 GM foods were approved by TFDA, including 64 corns, 23 soybeans, 21 cottons, 7 canola and 1 sugar beet. In addition to packaged foods, the regulations governing labeling for GM food ingredients were expanded to include food additives and unpackaged foods in 2015. Non-GM food ingredients unintentionally incorporated with more than 3% GM food ingredients will be viewed as GM food ingredients and must be labeled as GM. We develops GM qualitative and/or quantitative detection methods for GM food ingredients in soybeans, corns, rice and potatoes, and has provided the contract test service since 2000. In 2015, there were 437 contract test cases in total for the detection of GM food ingredients, of that 92% were soybeans and soybean related products. The detection for soybean grains represented the major part with a share of 46.7%, followed by soymilk (21.5%). No transgene was found in samples of 90.2% cases with a detection limit of 0.1%. The samples of the remaining 9.8% cases contained less than 3% GM food ingredients.