Vietnam-based Dai Hanh Phuc Co exported 43,000 tonnes of animal feed-grade oil to Taiwan over the past three years, the trading company’s manager said on Saturday, opening up the possibility that more domestic firms are involved in the latest cooking oil scare than previously thought.
The manager runs Dai Hanh Phuc with her Taiwanese partner, Yang Chen-yi (楊振益), who was detained by local authorities for allegedly supplying Ting Hsin International Group (頂新集團) with the animal feed-grade oil the Taiwanese conglomerate used to produce oil products sold for human use.
The manager said the Vietnamese firm shipped 6 million kilograms of edible cooking oil and 43 million kilograms of animal feed-grade oil to Taiwan from July 2011 to July of this year.
She also told Taiwanese officials that Dai Hanh Phuc has not been involved in the distribution of cooking oil since July.
Although no mutual judicial assistance accord exists between Taipei and Hanoi, Taiwanese diplomats said their talks with the Vietnam-based company could help serve as “testimony” for Taiwanese authorities investigating the case.
However, Dai Hanh Phuc’s motivation for issuing a statement that it is no longer distributing cooking oil is suspicious and needs to be investigated, local officials said.
If Dai Hanh Phuc exported the animal feed-grade oil to Taiwan as fit for human consumption, it would have had to forge documents to comply with Vietnamese law, local officials said.
If Dai Hanh Phuc’s claim that it supplied such a massive amount of animal feed-grade oil to Taiwanese companies to produce cooking oil is true — as Ting Hsin was found to have done — more businesses could be implicated in the tainted oil scandal than have been identified.
The manager was called in by Taiwan’s representative office in Vietnam to clarify the details surrounding the cooking oil scare that erupted earlier this month — the third of its kind in a year — all of which have involved Ting Hsin.
Ting Hsin, one of the nation’s largest food companies, is at the heart of the scandal, after it was been found to have used recycled waste oil and oil intended for animal use from Dai Hanh Phuc in its cooking oil products.
Ting Hsin senior executive Wei Ying-chun (魏應充), who resigned as chairman of Ting Hsin subsidiary Wei Chuan Foods Corp (味全食品工業) in the wake of the latest scandal, has been taken into custody for his suspected role in the incident.
Yang and four executives at Ting Hsin and its subsidiaries have also been remanded into custody.
Taiwan is projected to lose a working-age population of about 6.67 million people in two waves of retirement in the coming years, as the nation confronts accelerating demographic decline and a shortage of younger workers to take their place, the Ministry of the Interior said. Taiwan experienced its largest baby boom between 1958 and 1966, when the population grew by 3.78 million, followed by a second surge of 2.89 million between 1976 and 1982, ministry data showed. In 2023, the first of those baby boom generations — those born in the late 1950s and early 1960s — began to enter retirement, triggering
One of two tropical depressions that formed off Taiwan yesterday morning could turn into a moderate typhoon by the weekend, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Tropical Depression No. 21 formed at 8am about 1,850km off the southeast coast, CWA forecaster Lee Meng-hsuan (李孟軒) said. The weather system is expected to move northwest as it builds momentum, possibly intensifying this weekend into a typhoon, which would be called Mitag, Lee said. The radius of the storm is expected to reach almost 200km, she said. It is forecast to approach the southeast of Taiwan on Monday next week and pass through the Bashi Channel
NO CHANGE: The TRA makes clear that the US does not consider the status of Taiwan to have been determined by WWII-era documents, a former AIT deputy director said The American Institute in Taiwan’s (AIT) comments that World War-II era documents do not determine Taiwan’s political status accurately conveyed the US’ stance, the US Department of State said. An AIT spokesperson on Saturday said that a Chinese official mischaracterized World War II-era documents as stating that Taiwan was ceded to the China. The remarks from the US’ de facto embassy in Taiwan drew criticism from the Ma Ying-jeou Foundation, whose director said the comments put Taiwan in danger. The Chinese-language United Daily News yesterday reported that a US State Department spokesperson confirmed the AIT’s position. They added that the US would continue to
The number of Chinese spouses applying for dependent residency as well as long-term residency in Taiwan has decreased, the Mainland Affairs Council said yesterday, adding that the reduction of Chinese spouses staying or living in Taiwan is only one facet reflecting the general decrease in the number of people willing to get married in Taiwan. The number of Chinese spouses applying for dependent residency last year was 7,123, down by 2,931, or 29.15 percent, from the previous year. The same census showed that the number of Chinese spouses applying for long-term residency and receiving approval last year stood at 2,973, down 1,520,
RSS