Amid the ongoing food scare stemming from chemical-tainted beverages and other food products, Vice Premier Sean Chen said yesterday that “it’s not the right time” to look into responsibility of government officials.
“It’s not the right time to talk about responsibility,” Chen said, drawing an analogy that the first thing to do when a fire breaks out is to put out the fire in an efficient way, not probing the management of firefighters.
Chen said that before determining liability of government officials, authorities needed to understand the whole situation concerning the progression of the Act Governing Food Sanitation (食品衛生管理法), the Toxic Chemical Substances Control Act (毒性化學物質管理法) and other administrative measures adopted in this regard.
“That being said, it does not mean we will not” investigate the liability of officials, he told a press conference held following the weekly Cabinet meeting.
Yesterday’s meeting approved an amendment to the Act Governing Food Sanitation in a bid to deter food safety violations.
The proposed amendment suggested raising the maximum fine for violators who add illegal ingredients to food and beverages from the current NT$300,000 (US$10,463) to NT$6 million.
If a death results from illegal additives in food and beverages, violators would be subject to a maximum sentence of five years in prison and/or a fine of up to NT$10 million from the current penalty of three years in prison and/or a maximum fine of NT$900,000, the amendment said.
The government wants the Legislative Yuan to pass the amendment before June 14, when the legislature adjourns for summer recess.
Deputy Minister of Justice Chen Shou-huang (陳守煌) said the food sanitation act, if revised, would not be applied to the recent cases in which chemicals like di(2-ethylhexyl) phthalate, or DEHP, and diisononyl phthalate, or DINP, were discovered in clouding agents sold to food processors.
Also at the meeting, Premier Wu Den-yih (吳敦義) instructed the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to publicize regulations requiring certain food exporters to present certificates affirming that their goods do not contain harmful chemicals before shipping them to other countries.
Five foodstuff categories are subject to the regulation: sports drinks; juice; teas; fruit jams and syrups; and tablets or powders.
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