The latest health scare involving the massive use of a chemical, di(2-ethylhexyl) phthalate (DEHP), in bottled food and drinks has triggered concern among domestic food and beverage manufacturers that their image at home and abroad might be undermined by the incident.
Initial investigations show that the tainted ingredients and products were either produced by Yu Shen Chemical Co or came from the company’s suppliers.
The incident has so far embroiled nearly 170 upstream and midstream suppliers and manufacturers, including several famous brands, which have been busy recalling or changing the recipes for their products to protect their reputation and business.
In Yunlin County, the government has ordered cooperative stores at 50 elementary and junior high schools to temporarily suspend the sale of sports drinks and juice pending final examination results.
The National Sports Training Center in Greater Kaohsiung has also stopped selling sports drinks.
The concern has spread to the general public and businesses are worried that their hard-won reputations might be destroyed overnight.
Chen Mei-yen (陳美燕), general manager of Presotea (鮮茶道), a popular tea drink chain with more than 160 shops nationwide, said the company had recalled 7.4 tonnes of products allegedly tainted by DEHP after learning of the incident on Monday.
All recalled products will be destroyed, Chen said.
She said the tea house chain used a concentrated jelly from one ISO-certified supplier for making juice, but vowed that the company would only use fresh fruit in the future.
Presotea spokesman Chen Shien-chieh (鄭仙玠) said that although specially prescribed juice was not their key drink item, business had shrunk by an average of 20 percent over the last three days.
Possmei Corp, which exports raw materials and ingredients for Taiwan’s famous bubble milk tea to a tea shop in London, said eight ingredients that the company purchased from upstream suppliers were discovered to contain DEHP, but not the materials that were provided to the London shop.
Two children’s health food products under the Taiwan branch of Cerebos Pacific have also been found to contain DEHP, the company said in a statement on Thursday.
The contaminated products — a calcium supplement and a multivitamin tablet for children — were immediately pulled from store shelves after the chemical was detected, the company said.
Cerebos Taiwan said the two products were manufactured by a local maker, Prince Pharmaceutical Co, which purchased its ingredients from Yu Shen Chemical.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching