Namchow Group (南僑集團) chairman Alfred Chen (陳飛龍) yesterday called on the government to gear the nation’s food safety regulations to international standards.
Chen made the remarks a week after a subsidary of one of Namchow’s peers, Ting Hsin International Group (頂新集團), was accused of adding oil meant for animal feed to products meant for human consumption.
Following a series of food safety scandals over the past three years, foreign markets have developed concerns with Taiwanese food products and even labeled them as unacceptable, Chen said.
That has severely affected the nation’s food industry, he said.
“The nation must not face the food safety issue behind closed doors,” he said.
Chen said there is still a lot of room to improve food safety regulations and introduce stricter international standards, which might deter food manufacturers from breaking the rules.
Taking the latest oil scandal as an example, he said the government should carefully watch where recalled oil products go in the future.
Without a clear mechanism, recalled oil products might have a chance of flowing back onto the market, violating food safety standards again, Chen said.
Instead, the government should encourage the nation’s industrial oil manufacturers to consume the recalled oil, he added.
Namchow Group yesterday demonstrated the achievement of Lucky Royal Co Ltd (皇家可口), a subsidiary operating the Duroyal (杜老爺) ice cream brand, in adopting a technology-based food traceability management system connected to the government’s public cloud.
Chen said the group has invested hundreds of thousands of New Taiwan dollars in constructing a high-quality food traceability management system to help the company better control products and also improve consumer confidence in Lucky Royal.
The group plans to further strengthen the system in its other major businesses within three years, he added.
Meanwhile, Namchow Chemical Industrial Co (南僑化學工業), the group’s flagship unit and a listed company on the Taiwan Stock Exchange, saw net income totaling NT$634 million (US$20.83 million), or NT$2.55 per share, in the first eight months of the year, with consolidated sales in the first nine months of the year up 11.09 percent from a year earlier to NT$11.05 billion.
The group is set to launch a five-day product exhibition today.
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