The Consumers' Foundation said yesterday that it had received reports that counterfeit sea cucumber made of konjac jelly was being sold in traditional marketplaces and even some hypermarkets.
Foundation officials questioned whether RT-Mart, the nation's second-largest hypermarket operator, has been involved in misleading consumers, although the chain said it had been a victim of deception itself.
Officials said that consumers recently complained to the Taipei County Government that they had bought counterfeit sea cucumber for NT$460 per kilogram in a traditional market.
Further complaints were later received from consumers who had bought counterfeit sea cucumber from RT-Mart.
The consumers told officials that they had bought the sea cucumber, a popular Chinese delicacy, at NT$700 (US$21.87) per kilogram from RT-Mart's Chunglun outlet in Taipei City.
The officials said genuine sea cucumber normally sells for around NT$1,000 per kilogram.
By selling substandard sea cucumbers at a price higher than that of traditional markets, RT-Mart could inadvertently mislead consumers into thinking that they were purchasing the genuine product, they said.
The officials said that RT-Mart "had failed to do its share" to safeguard the quality of its products, and that this could make company officials subject to imprisonment or fines.
An RT-Mart executive said the company would get to the bottom of the matter and vowed to compensate consumers.
An essay competition jointly organized by a local writing society and a publisher affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) might have contravened the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例), the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said on Thursday. “In this case, the partner organization is clearly an agency under the CCP’s Fujian Provincial Committee,” MAC Deputy Minister and spokesperson Liang Wen-chieh (梁文傑) said at a news briefing in Taipei. “It also involves bringing Taiwanese students to China with all-expenses-paid arrangements to attend award ceremonies and camps,” Liang said. Those two “characteristics” are typically sufficient
A magnitude 5.9 earthquake that struck about 33km off the coast of Hualien City was the "main shock" in a series of quakes in the area, with aftershocks expected over the next three days, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Prior to the magnitude 5.9 quake shaking most of Taiwan at 6:53pm yesterday, six other earthquakes stronger than a magnitude of 4, starting with a magnitude 5.5 quake at 6:09pm, occurred in the area. CWA Seismological Center Director Wu Chien-fu (吳健富) confirmed that the quakes were all part of the same series and that the magnitude 5.5 temblor was
The brilliant blue waters, thick foliage and bucolic atmosphere on this seemingly idyllic archipelago deep in the Pacific Ocean belie the key role it now plays in a titanic geopolitical struggle. Palau is again on the front line as China, and the US and its allies prepare their forces in an intensifying contest for control over the Asia-Pacific region. The democratic nation of just 17,000 people hosts US-controlled airstrips and soon-to-be-completed radar installations that the US military describes as “critical” to monitoring vast swathes of water and airspace. It is also a key piece of the second island chain, a string of
The Central Weather Administration has issued a heat alert for southeastern Taiwan, warning of temperatures as high as 36°C today, while alerting some coastal areas of strong winds later in the day. Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門) and Pingtung County’s Neipu Township (內埔) are under an orange heat alert, which warns of temperatures as high as 36°C for three consecutive days, the CWA said, citing southwest winds. The heat would also extend to Tainan’s Nansi (楠西) and Yujing (玉井) districts, as well as Pingtung’s Gaoshu (高樹), Yanpu (鹽埔) and Majia (瑪家) townships, it said, forecasting highs of up to 36°C in those areas
RSS