The National Federation of Teachers’ Unions (NFTU) yesterday launched a boycott against Ting Hsin International Group (頂新集團) and its subsidiaries, saying that the multinational’s involvement in both the recycled waste oil scandal and an adulterated edible oils scare last year proves it is an “unscrupulous, black-hearted” business.
“Today, I speak here with a heavy heart. Health and food safety are of the utmost importance to us, yet we have been unnerved by two major food scandals in less than a year... The government’s inability and passive attitude in handling such issues have left us disappointed, hopeless and in despair. We must teach those dishonest businesspeople a lesson ourselves,” union president Chang Hsu-change (張旭政) told a news conference in Taipei.
Chang said that despite being an international corporation that says it “safeguards the quality of its ingredients from farmland to dinner table,” Ting Hsin International was found in November last year to have used adulterated oil from Chang Chi Foodstuff Factory Co (大統) in 21 products it manufactured for its subsidiary Wei Chuan Food Corp (味全).
Photo: Wu Po-hsuan, Taipei Times
This month, Wei Chan also became implicated in the snowballing oil scandal after 12 pork floss and meat paste products were discovered to contain Chang Guann Co’s (強冠企業) lard oil that was mixed with recycled cooking oil collected from restaurant fryers, Chang said.
To let Ting Hsin feel the public’s rage and discontent, Chang said the federation is teaming up with its 100,000 members nationwide and other groups to boycott the company’s subsidiaries, including Wei Chuan, instant noodle producer Tingyi (Cayman Islands) Holding Corp (康師傅控股), fried chicken chain Dicos (德克士) and Taiwan Star Telecom Corp (台灣之星).
“We are also to make our boycott campaign known to the hundreds of member organizations of Education International,” Chang added.
NFTU vice general secretary Lo Te-shui (羅德水) said the government’s failure to ensure edible oil quality 35 years after the nation’s first oil scandal was a “national disgrace.”
The 1979 scandal involved rice bran oil laced with polychlorinated biphenyl — a group of industrial chemicals that can cause long-term skin problems if consumed in large amounts — that affected more than 2,000 people across the nation.
“I vividly remember when Ting Hsin International [chairman Wei Ying-chun (魏應充)] bowed and apologized in front of the cameras last year for the corporation’s role in the adulterated oil scare. However, if Wei were truly sorry, would his company end up on the list of food manufacturers that have allegedly used waste oil?” Lo said.
Lin Ching-sun (林清松), the chief of the federation’s Collective Bargaining and Legal Service Center, also urged the Taiwan Food Good Manufacturing Practice (GMP) Development Association to reshuffle its personnel so that the GMP system can be administered by an independent third party, rather than food industry heavyweights.
“We must not sit by while unscrupulous firms get rich, their employees get overworked and people nationwide get cancer,” Lin said.
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