President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) yesterday presided over a second national security meeting concerning food safety issues, during which he instructed the Executive Yuan to have its new food safety office conclude personnel transfers and begin operations as soon as possible.
The country has faced major cooking oil scares in the past two months, with lard-based oils sold on the market found to contain oil extracted from recycled kitchen and industrial waste in one case and oils meant for use in animal feed used to make cooking oil in another, triggering public outrage.
The government estimates the nation suffered losses of up to NT$16.6 billion (US$547 million) in the most recent adulterated lard scandal.
At the meeting, Ma directed the National Police Agency to sweep the nation for any underground factories within the month.
The food safety incident has caused not only great losses to the industry, but more importantly, shaken the faith of the public in food safety, as well as harming Taiwan’s international image, Ma said.
The Executive Yuan’s new food safety office serves to integrate and coordinate on affairs of food security and though it may take a long time, the government must have confidence that it can eradicate all blind spots in terms of food safety, he added.
According to the Executive Yuan, the new food safety office will officially open tomorrow.
The office is an upgrade of the Cabinet’s current food safety promotion task force and its establishment comes amid the string of food problems in recent months centered on cooking oil.
Three officials from the Council of Agriculture, the Ministry of Health and Welfare and the Ministry of Economic Affairs began preparatory work for the office yesterday, the Executive Yuan said.
Another five specialists on policy, technology and food affairs are also to join the new agency, which the government said will be a driving force in food safety management across ministries and departments.
Earlier yesterday, Minister Without Portfolio Chiang Been-huang (蔣丙煌), the minister-designate of health and welfare, also convened a meeting on oil distribution management in which he instructed the Ministry of Health and Welfare, the Council of Agriculture and the Ministry of Economic Affairs to inspect and trace the logistics flows of cooking oil, animal feed oil and industrial-grade oil products respectively.
Chiang is expected to assume office as health minister tomorrow at the earliest.
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