Random border checks by Taiwan's health authorities found 915 imported shipments of food and other items which did not pass inspection, according to a statement from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on Wednesday.

The FDA said it randomly inspected 52,725 of 675,018 import shipments at the border in 2016, and 915 shipments, or 1.74 percent, had problems. That percentage was lower than the 1.9 percent of total shipments being held back seen in 2015, it said.

Chiu Hsiu-yi, director of the FDA's Northern Center for Regional Administration, said most of the problem products were vegetables, fruits, spices and Chinese wolfberries, as well as food containers.

According to FDA information, the sub par vegetable products included onions from the United States which were found to contain traces of heavy metals. Other products that did not pass muster included imports of mandarin oranges from Japan, Sichuan peppercorns from China and Chinese wolfberries from China.