The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) yesterday said that Ting Hsin Oil and Fat Industrial Co (頂新製油實業), a subsidiary of Ting Hsin International Group (頂新集團), allegedly used animal feed oil in the production of its cooking lard products.
“The Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in Hanoi notified us on Thursday that the cooking lard oil Ting Hsin Oil and Fat had imported from Vietnam-based oil manufacturer Dai Hanh Phuc Co last year and this year was actually meant for animal feed,” FDA interim Director-General Chiang Yu-mei (姜郁美) told a press conference late yesterday.
Chiang said the FDA made the discovery after trying to ascertain the sources of the nation’s imported cooking lard oil, most of which comes from Hong Kong, Spain, Vietnam and Japan.
The FDA has temporarily suspended a Ting Hsin Oil and Fat factory in Pingtung County, where two sumps containing a total of 358 tonnes of lard have been sealed as a precaution, Chiang said.
Chiang said a ban has also been imposed on imports of butter and lard from Vietnam, while other cooking oil products imported from the Southeast Asian country have been subjected to batch-by-batch inspections starting yesterday.
“The FDA will reconfirm with the office regarding the nature of the oil imported from the Vietnamese firm and investigate whether Ting Hsin Oil and Fat have mixed animal feed oil in its lard products,” Chiang said.
Earlier yesterday, former minister of health and welfare Chiu Wen-ta (邱文達) said in an interview published yesterday that there are two more companies in addition to Cheng I Food Co (正義股份) — also a subsidiary of Ting Hsin International — that have purchased suspicious amounts of animal feed oil.
However, the information has not been made public, Chiu said.
Chiu, who resigned on Oct. 3 over a recycled waste oil scandal involving manufacturer Chang Guann Co (強冠企業) last month, made the allegations in an interview with the Chinese-language CommonWealth Magazine.
He said that besides Ting Hsin, another conglomerate has been engulfed in multiple food scandals since the 2011 plasticizer food scare, but has yet to be caught.
When questioned at a press conference yesterday morning, FDA Northern Center for Regional Administration director Feng Jun-lan (馮潤蘭) said the agency could not comment because it has not obtained evidence for the claim.
However, Chiang held another press conference hours later announcing that the two companies were Chiayi County’s Yung Cheng Oil Co (永成油脂) and Hsu Jih Yu Trading Co (旭日友商行).
“On Sept. 18, the FDA referred six of Cheng I Food’s upstream suppliers to investigative authorities due to suspicious discrepancies between the accounts of their business dealings with Cheng I Food,” Chiang said. “Yung Cheng Oil and Hsu Jih Yu were on the second list of suspicious suppliers to Cheng I Food. We ordered investigations into the two firms on Sept. 30.”
Chiang said that preliminary investigations have only discovered that Yung Cheng peddled a total of 1,600 tonnes of lard to Cheng I Food via Hsu Jih Yu this year, and it has yet to be determined whether any irregularities are involved.
As for the identity of the “unscrupulous large corporation,” Chiang said she had no knowledge of the issue and would double check with Chiu — whom she said is on a “mind-emptying trip” abroad — to find out what he meant.
Meanwhile, the FDA also faced mounting criticism over its repeated refusal to make public a list of 363 food manufacturers, restaurants and street vendors that have purchased Cheng I Food’s potentially tainted oil to avoid confusion over names, as seen in the waste oil scandal triggered by Chang Guann last month.
The agency softened its stance later yesterday, with Chiang pledging to decide whether to release the list by the end of the day.
No list was ready at press time.
The US government has signed defense cooperation agreements with Japan and the Philippines to boost the deterrence capabilities of countries in the first island chain, a report by the National Security Bureau (NSB) showed. The main countries on the first island chain include the two nations and Taiwan. The bureau is to present the report at a meeting of the legislature’s Foreign Affairs and National Defense Committee tomorrow. The US military has deployed Typhon missile systems to Japan’s Yamaguchi Prefecture and Zambales province in the Philippines during their joint military exercises. It has also installed NMESIS anti-ship systems in Japan’s Okinawa
TRAGEDY STRIKES TAIPEI: The suspect died after falling off a building after he threw smoke grenades into Taipei Main Station and went on a killing spree in Zhongshan A 27-year-old suspect allegedly threw smoke grenades in Taipei Main Station and then proceeded to Zhongshan MRT Station in a random killing spree that resulted in the death of the suspect and two other civilians, and seven injured, including one in critical condition, as of press time last night. The suspect, identified as a man surnamed Chang Wen (張文), allegedly began the attack at Taipei Main Station, the Taipei Fire Department said, adding that it received a report at 5:24pm that smoke grenades had been thrown in the station. One man in his 50s was rushed to hospital after a cardiac arrest
ON ALERT: Taiwan’s partners would issue warnings if China attempted to use Interpol to target Taiwanese, and the global body has mechanisms to prevent it, an official said China has stationed two to four people specializing in Taiwan affairs at its embassies in several democratic countries to monitor and harass Taiwanese, actions that the host nations would not tolerate, National Security Bureau (NSB) Director-General Tsai Ming-yen (蔡明彥) said yesterday. Tsai made the comments at a meeting of the legislature’s Foreign Affairs and National Defense Committee, which asked him and Minister of National Defense Wellington Koo (顧立雄) to report on potential conflicts in the Taiwan Strait and military preparedness. Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Michelle Lin (林楚茵) expressed concern that Beijing has posted personnel from China’s Taiwan Affairs Office to its
‘ILLEGAL RULING’: The KMT and the TPP slammed the Constitutional Court judgement, saying it contravened the law and was trying to clear the way for a ‘green dictatorship’ The Constitutional Court yesterday ruled that amendments to the Constitutional Court Procedure Act (憲法訴訟法) passed by the Legislative Yuan last year are unconstitutional, as they contravene due legislative process and separation of powers. The Legislative Yuan on Dec. 20 last year passed amendments stipulating that no fewer than 10 grand justices must take part in deliberations of the Constitutional Court, and at least nine grand justices must agree to declare a law unconstitutional. The Executive Yuan on Jan. 2 requested that lawmakers reconsider the bill, but the Legislative Yuan, under a combined majority of Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Taiwan People’s Party
RSS