Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) legislators yesterday grilled Health Minister Lin Fang-yue (林芳郁) and Vice Premier Paul Chiu (邱正雄) over the government’s response to the melamine scandal, panning the government for not pulling tainted products from store shelves.
At a meeting of the legislature’s Health, Environment and Labor Committee yesterday, DPP caucus whip William Lai (賴清德) asked Lin whether Maxwell instant coffee, the brand served to legislative staff, contained melamine.
Lin responded by saying: “The toxicity is limited if you don’t drink it very often.”
Lai pressed on, saying the instant coffee was imported from China, to which Lin replied that although the Department of Health had banned milk powder, dairy products and products containing plant protein from China, it would not recall products that had already entered the country.
“Your logic is all wrong,” Lai said, calling for all unsafe products to be recalled.
After taking the podium, DPP Legislator Chen Ying (陳瑩) offered Chiu, who doubles as chairman of the Consumer Protection Commission (CPC), and Lin each a cup of Maxwell coffee.
The two hesitated to take the cups, at which point Chen asked: “Didn’t you say as long as you drink lots of water, you can clear your body of melamine?”
In June, a Taiwanese company imported 1,000 25kg bags of Chinese milk powder tainted with the industrial chemical and sold them to food processing factories to be used in cakes, beverages and calcium tablets.
On Sunday, the concerns over tainted products spread as King Car Industrial Co (金車) recalled eight of its products containing non-dairy creamer from China, all of which tested positive for melamine.
Another six companies that use non-dairy creamer from China sent their products to be tested for melamine yesterday.
The health department also said it had tested 18 locally produced brands of fresh milk and found no melamine.
At the meeting yesterday, Chen mocked Lin, bowing her head in prayer as a reference to a comment Lin made in June during the enterovirus outbreak, when he said he would rely on prayer if the outbreak persisted.
Accusing health officials and the CPC of responding too slowly after learning that tainted products were being sold in Taiwan, Chen “prayed” that God give these officials “capacity, determination and a sense of shame and responsibility.”
Asked by Chen whether any officials should step down to take responsibility, Chiu said the officials had done everything they should to deal with the tainted products.
In response to companies that have said the ban on select imports from China would hurt their business, Lin asked them to “withstand this temporary pain to grow in the long run.”
Noting that Japanese agriculture minister Seiichi Ota had resigned on Friday over his ministry’s handling of imported rice tainted with mold and pesticide, DPP Legislator Huang Sue-ying (黃淑英) asked who should resign over the milk scandal.
“We didn’t do anything wrong,” Chiu replied. “All this time health officials have worked hard ... There’s no need to kill a person every time [a problem arises].”
At a separate setting yesterday, Control Yuan member Cheng Jen-hung (程仁宏) said he would start a probe this week to determine whether there were any irregularities in the government’s handling of the scandal.
Cheng said he planned to question officials at the health department, Ministry of Economic Affairs and Council of Agriculture to determine whether information was withheld from the public about the contamination or whether there had been any failings in cross-strait communication on food safety.
The government should conduct a thorough examination of all dairy products on the market and demand businesses pull questionable products immediately, he said.
ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY SHIH HSIU-CHUAN AND CNA
CHAMPIONS: President Lai congratulated the players’ outstanding performance, cheering them for marking a new milestone in the nation’s baseball history Taiwan on Sunday won their first Little League Baseball World Series (LLBWS) title in 29 years, as Taipei’s Dong Yuan Elementary School defeated a team from Las Vegas 7-0 in the championship game in South Williamsport, Pennsylvania. It was Taiwan’s first championship in the annual tournament since 1996, ending a nearly three-decade drought. “It has been a very long time ... and we finally made it,” Taiwan manager Lai Min-nan (賴敏男) said after the game. Lai said he last managed a Dong Yuan team in at the South Williamsport in 2015, when they were eliminated after four games. “There is
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers have declared they survived recall votes to remove them from office today, although official results are still pending as the vote counting continues. Although final tallies from the Central Election Commission (CEC) are still pending, preliminary results indicate that the recall campaigns against all seven KMT lawmakers have fallen short. As of 6:10 pm, Taichung Legislators Yen Kuan-heng (顏寬恒) and Yang Chiung-ying (楊瓊瓔), Hsinchu County Legislator Lin Szu-ming (林思銘), Nantou County Legislator Ma Wen-chun (馬文君) and New Taipei City Legislator Lo Ming-tsai (羅明才) had all announced they
Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) yesterday visited Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), as the chipmaker prepares for volume production of Nvidia’s next-generation artificial intelligence (AI) chips. It was Huang’s third trip to Taiwan this year, indicating that Nvidia’s supply chain is deeply connected to Taiwan. Its partners also include packager Siliconware Precision Industries Co (矽品精密) and server makers Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) and Quanta Computer Inc (廣達). “My main purpose is to visit TSMC,” Huang said yesterday. “As you know, we have next-generation architecture called Rubin. Rubin is very advanced. We have now taped out six brand new
POWER PLANT POLL: The TPP said the number of ‘yes’ votes showed that the energy policy should be corrected, and the KMT said the result was a win for the people’s voice The government does not rule out advanced nuclear energy generation if it meets the government’s three prerequisites, President William Lai (賴清德) said last night after the number of votes in favor of restarting a nuclear power plant outnumbered the “no” votes in a referendum yesterday. The referendum failed to pass, despite getting more “yes” votes, as the Referendum Act (公民投票法) states that the vote would only pass if the votes in favor account for more than one-fourth of the total number of eligible voters and outnumber the opposing votes. Yesterday’s referendum question was: “Do you agree that the Ma-anshan Nuclear Power Plant