A shipment of fresh, mature pineapples was delivered to Macau yesterday in a record-breaking 13 hours, trade sources reported.
It took only 13 hours to allow fresh and tasty pineapples to be put on a Taiwan Agricultural Products Exposition table in Macau around 9am yesterday after farmers in Chiayi County began to pick and pack the fruit around 8pm on Sunday upon receiving a telephone order from the Macau expo authorities, said Wu Wen-hsiung (吳文雄), vice president of the China Times Evening News, one of the private organizations co-sponsoring the expo.
According to the Taiwan Agricultural Products Expo authorities in Macau, the Taiwanese pineapples on display were all sold out on the first day of the expo on Sunday. They placed another order with the Chiayi pineapple farmers around 4pm the same day in the hope that a new shipment could be delivered when the expo reopened the next day at 9am.
The Chiayi farmers did not fail them -- they delivered the cartons at 4am yesterday, enabling the shipment to reach CKS International Airport at 7am.
The transportation companies as well as the Macau customs authorities have also been cooperative -- the pineapples were flown over the Taiwan Strait and passed Macau's customs and quarantine checks to hit the expo table in two hours, Wu said.
Normal transportation of agricultural products from Taiwan to Macau takes at least 20 hours if the products are transported by air. It usually takes three to seven days if the shipments are delivered by sea, Wu said.
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
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