Poppy seed, a popular flavoring for bagels made in US bakeries, has been judged to be an "illegal drug" by the Taiwan High Court.
An owner of a bagel shop in Taipei has been found guilty of importing opium poppy seeds and was handed a three-month suspended sentence for her crime. The store in question is the Marco Polo Bakery, located on Chungching South Road, Taipei.
The High Court, reversing a not-guilty verdict already given by a lower court, convicted Chuo Liu Ching-ti (卓劉慶弟) in accordance with the Drugs Hazard Prevention Act, which outlaws the possession of opium poppies and seeds.
The court found that Chuo, age 66, had purchased over 22kg of the poppy seeds in January last year from US-based Valente Yeast through a friend residing in the US. Chuo said bakers employed at her shop had requested the seeds in response to demand from customers.
The customs officials, who informed law enforcement officials of the import, told the court that the import documentation for the shipment described the contents as "poppy seed."
According to the court, investigating agents allowed the packages to be delivered to their destination, and subsequently raided the bagel shop following delivery.
In defense, Chuo contended that there are over 500 species of poppy plant and that she did not know the poppy seed in question was derived from Papaver somniferum, a type of opium poppy.
She further said that the US-based supplier had told her that poppy-flavored bagels are very popular in US, second only to plain bagels and sesame-flavored bagels.
The Taipei District Court previously determined in January that Chuo was not guilty because she did not know the imported seed came from a kind of opium poppy banned in Taiwan.
However, the High Court dismissed the not-guilty decision on the grounds that it was not justifiable for a bakery owner not to know what opium poppy seeds look like -- because they are so widely used by bakeries.
‘ABUSE OF POWER’: Lee Chun-yi allegedly used a Control Yuan vehicle to transport his dog to a pet grooming salon and take his wife to restaurants, media reports said Control Yuan Secretary-General Lee Chun-yi (李俊俋) resigned on Sunday night, admitting that he had misused a government vehicle, as reported by the media. Control Yuan Vice President Lee Hung-chun (李鴻鈞) yesterday apologized to the public over the issue. The watchdog body would follow up on similar accusations made by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and would investigate the alleged misuse of government vehicles by three other Control Yuan members: Su Li-chiung (蘇麗瓊), Lin Yu-jung (林郁容) and Wang Jung-chang (王榮璋), Lee Hung-chun said. Lee Chun-yi in a statement apologized for using a Control Yuan vehicle to transport his dog to a
BEIJING’S ‘PAWN’: ‘We, as Chinese, should never forget our roots, history, culture,’ Want Want Holdings general manager Tsai Wang-ting said at a summit in China The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) yesterday condemned Want Want China Times Media Group (旺旺中時媒體集團) for making comments at the Cross-Strait Chinese Culture Summit that it said have damaged Taiwan’s sovereignty, adding that it would investigate if the group had colluded with China in the matter and contravened cross-strait regulations. The council issued a statement after Want Want Holdings (旺旺集團有限公司) general manager Tsai Wang-ting (蔡旺庭), the third son of the group’s founder, Tsai Eng-meng (蔡衍明), said at the summit last week that the group originated in “Chinese Taiwan,” and has developed and prospered in “the motherland.” “We, as Chinese, should never
‘A SURVIVAL QUESTION’: US officials have been urging the opposition KMT and TPP not to block defense spending, especially the special defense budget, an official said The US plans to ramp up weapons sales to Taiwan to a level exceeding US President Donald Trump’s first term as part of an effort to deter China as it intensifies military pressure on the nation, two US officials said on condition of anonymity. If US arms sales do accelerate, it could ease worries about the extent of Trump’s commitment to Taiwan. It would also add new friction to the tense US-China relationship. The officials said they expect US approvals for weapons sales to Taiwan over the next four years to surpass those in Trump’s first term, with one of them saying
INDO-PACIFIC REGION: Royal Navy ships exercise the right of freedom of navigation, including in the Taiwan Strait and South China Sea, the UK’s Tony Radakin told a summit Freedom of navigation in the Indo-Pacific region is as important as it is in the English Channel, British Chief of the Defence Staff Admiral Tony Radakin said at a summit in Singapore on Saturday. The remark came as the British Royal Navy’s flagship aircraft carrier, the HMS Prince of Wales, is on an eight-month deployment to the Indo-Pacific region as head of an international carrier strike group. “Upholding the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, and with it, the principles of the freedom of navigation, in this part of the world matters to us just as it matters in the
RSS