What is now safe to eat?

Factory Sealed, Two Biscuits Being Tested For Melamine

KUALA LUMPUR: The Health Ministry has sealed a factory producing two local biscuits which are said to contain excessive amount of melamine by the Hong Kong government's laboratory.

Its Food Safety and Quality Division director, Noraini Mohd Othman said, in a statement Sunday night, the products would be tested for melamine.

She was commenting on a Reuters report that excessive amount of melamine had been found in Munchy's Mini Crackers with Peanut Butter and Munchy's Mini Crackers with Cheese Cream, produced by the Munchy Food Industries Sdn Bhd.

Meanwhile, she said the ministry cleared 11 more food products of melamine.

They are Amoy Flour Vermicilli (Sau Tao), Chocolate cookies (Golden Fuji), Chocolate Drink (Garden Stone), Cream Flavour Biscuits (Hong Da Food), Creamy Peanut Butter (Kinus), Crips Chocolate Flavour Cracker (Golden Fuji), Fiber Cracker (Aji), Gula Udang Merah (Sanwa), House of Steamed Potato (Silang), Saltine Crackers (Four Seas) and The Original Danish Butter Cookies (Silang).

Noraini also advised consumers not to buy unlabelled biscuits at night and farmers' markets, and check the content of those with labels before buying them.

Consumers could contact the Food Safety and Quality Division at 03-88833655, 03-88833503, 03-88833652 and 03-88833500 or surf http://fsq.moh.goc.my for information.

Meanwhile, Munchy Food Industries chief executive officer C.K. Tan said none of its products contain any dairy-based ingredients from China except from Australia and France.

The company will give full cooperation to the ministry, he said in a statement.

"As a reputable 18 year-old homegrown manufacturer of confectionaries with a strong international brand presence, we have consistently view consumer food safety as a top priority. We will continue to uphold this without any compromise," he said.

He claimed that independent certification agencies, namely Chemical Laboratory (M) Sdn Bhd and Pacific Lab Services of Zargo (Singapore) had certified its products as safe.-- BERNAMA

Fresh from my backyard

Kebun sayurku


Pinapples at large


Lemon grass, papaya and the chicken house at the background built by my father.


We will have daily supply of three eggs per day for a year or so.


Extras for sale.


Fresh bayam for dinner.


My wife attending to her sayur bayam, sayur bunga, pokok jagong at an open space behind our house. Previously the area was rich with lallang.

The price hike in fuel and other commodities was eating deeper into my pocket and for now I had my wife to thank for as now we are no longer buying vegetables, lemon grass, papaya, pineapple, banana, yam, tapioca, terung, sweet potato, sweet petula, eggs and ginger.

My wife cleared backyard (behind our kitchen) and is now full of greens. I have my father to build the chicken den. My job is confine to watering the vegetable.

We have all that fresh from our backyard. We are even selling pineapples, banana, lemon grass as there are just to many for our own consumption.

My three chicken are giving us three eggs per day and as I had said in my posting last year, we always six eggs `stand by' everyday. My two previous chickens had retired after two years and now their tasks been taken over by three new birds which started giving us eggs since four weeks ago.