A Taiwanese bubble tea drink operator in Germany made public on Friday test results that showed the ingredients in its products are safe for consumption, rebutting a media report that the beverage may contain chemicals that could cause cancer.
The results of the tests, conducted by a German government-certified lab, showed the ingredients in the beverage conform to German health regulations, said Lai Ming-ching, owner of Berlin-headquartered teashop chain BoBoQ and Possmei, a Taiwan-based manufacturer of bubble tea drink ingredients.
Lai was rebutting a report published on Aug. 21 by German newspaper Rheinische Post that said the drink contained carcinogenic chemicals such as styrene, acetophenone and brominated substances.
The media report said samples were collected from an unnamed franchise chain in Moenchengladbach, Germany, and tested by RWTH Aachen University and instrument firm Leco Instrumente GmbH.
Der Spiegel, a German news magazine, also ran the report and said most of the materials were imported from Taiwan.
Lai said such negative reports have led to a loss of business in BoBoQ’s 100-plus franchised stores. The company intends to collect evidence and may take legal action against the media outlets that ran “false reports” against BoBoQ’s products, he said.
Taiwan’s representative office in Germany also issued a statement dated Aug. 31, saying food items in Taiwan are monitored under the Act Governing Food Sanitation (食品衛生管理法).
It said that Taiwan carries out regular checks to make sure exported goods comply with the legal requirements of the destination countries.
Meanwhile, on Sept. 2, German radio station Deutschland Radio reported that the tests cited in the Rheinische Post article did not specify examination methods or the amount of cancer-causing substances found in the drink.
Police have detained a Taoyuan couple suspected of over the past two months colluding with human trafficking rings and employment scammers in Southeast Asia to send nearly 100 Taiwanese jobseekers to Cambodia. At a media briefing in Taipei yesterday, the Criminal Investigation Bureau presented items seized from the couple, including alleged victims’ passports, forged COVID-19 vaccination records, mobile phones, bank documents, checks and cash. The man, surnamed Tsai (蔡), and his girlfriend, surnamed Tsan (詹), were taken into custody last month, after police at Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport stopped four jobseekers from boarding a flight to Phnom Penh, said Dustin Lee (李泱輯),
BILINGUAL PLAN: The 17 educators were recruited under a program that seeks to empower Taiwanese, the envoy to the Philippines said The Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in the Philippines on Thursday hosted a send-off event for the first group of English-language teachers from the country who were recruited for a Ministry of Education-initiated program to advance bilingual education in Taiwan. The 14 teachers and three teaching assistants are part of the Taiwan Foreign English Teacher Program, which aims to help find English-language instructors for Taiwan’s public elementary and junior-high schools, the office said. Seventy-seven teachers and 11 teaching assistants from the Philippines have been hired to teach in Taiwan in the coming school year, office data showed. Among the first group is 57-year-old
TRICKED INTO MOVING: Local governments in China do not offer any help, and Taiwanese there must compete with Chinese in an unfamiliar setting, a researcher said Beijing’s incentives for Taiwanese businesspeople to invest in China are only intended to lure them across the Taiwan Strait, after which they receive no real support, an expert said on Sunday. Over the past few years, Beijing has been offering a number of incentives that “benefit Taiwanese in name, while benefiting China in reality,” a cross-strait affairs expert said on condition of anonymity. Strategies such as the “31 incentives” are intended to lure Taiwanese talent, capital and technology to help address China’s economic issues while also furthering its “united front” efforts, they said. Local governments in China do not offer much practical
PUBLIC POLL: More than half believe Chinese drills would make Taiwanese less willing to unify with China, while 36 percent said an invasion was highly unlikely Half of Taiwanese support independence, according to the results of a poll released yesterday by the Taiwanese Public Opinion Foundation, which also found that President Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) support rating fell by 7 percentage points. Fifty percent of respondents supported independence, 25.7 percent supported maintaining the “status quo” and 11.8 percent supported unification, while 12.1 percent had no opinion, did not know or refused to answer, the foundation said. Support for independence is the new mainstream opinion, regardless of which party is in power, foundation chairman Michael You (游盈隆) said. Insinuations that Taiwan wants to maintain the “status quo” are a fabrication that
RSS