Taipei - Taiwan, for religious and health reasons, plans to require food manufacturers to provide detailed identification of vegetarian food, the Department of Health said on Thursday. Under the new rule, food manufacturers must identify the content of the veggie food according to five categories on the outside of the food package.
The five categories are pure veggie, milk veggie, egg veggie, egg/milk veggie and plant veggie.
Pure veggie refers to food which does not contain meat, egg, milk or five kinds of plants - onion, garlic, leek, etc - which are spicy and considered unclean and banned by strict Buddhist practitioners.
Egg veggie, milk veggie, egg/milk veggie and plant veggie means the food is veggie food - without meat - but contains egg, milk, egg/milk or the five kinds of spicy plants, respectively.
While vegetarian food generally means food made without meat, many Asians, for religious reasons, do not eat veggie food which has milk, egg or the five kinds of spicy plants in them.
At the request of some 100 Buddhist and vegetarian groups, the Department of Health has decided to introduce the strict labeling of veggie food.
The department will announce the new rule in July and implement it next year. Violators of the rule will face a 240,000-Taiwan-dollar (7,900-US-dollar) fine.
Most of Taiwan's 23 million population are Buddhist. Some 2 million Taiwanese are vegetarians - either for religious or health reason - and their number is growing.
