Prosecutors in Changhua County yesterday indicted the chairman of a sesame oil producer and five other executives after discovering that it has been selling adulterated oil labeled as 100 percent pure since 2009. Prosecutors recommended confiscating more than NT$300 million (US$10.2 million) of what they call ill-gotten gains from Flavor Full Foods Inc, the largest sesame oil producer in Taiwan and the second-largest in the world.
The indicted officials include chairman Chen Wen-nan (陳文南), development director Chen Jui-li (陳瑞禮), and research and development manager Lin Jui-tsung (林瑞聰), along with three others, all of whom face charges of fraud and violating the Act Governing Food Sanitation (食品衛生管理法), according to Changhua prosecutors.
The New Taipei City-based (新北市) company originally claimed it only used refined cottonseed oil in products sold abroad, but later admitted that the lower quality oil was mixed into 24 products sold domestically. The case is being handled by the Changhua District Prosecutors’ Office because the company’s factory is located in the county.
Suspicions over the company’s practices were revealed last month, at around the same time the spotlight fell on Chang Chi Foodstuff Factory Co, which also has an edible oil factory in Changhua. Chang Chi, which sells its products under the Tatung brand, had been using copper chlorophyllin, a coloring agent banned for use in cooking oil, in its olive oil and was found to be adulterating higher-end cooking oils with cheaper cottonseed oil.
Meanwhile, health authorities yesterday leveled a fine of NT$1.85 billion against Chang Chi Foodstuff Factory for deceiving consumers for years by selling adulterated products branded as pure oils.
The Changhua County health authorities had earlier fined the company a total of NT$40.3 million on charges of violating the Act Governing Food Sanitation, but the Ministry of Health and Welfare decided that the fine was too low.
The central government demanded that the county government levy a much stiffer fine against the company, which, according to local prosecutors, had made illicit gains of NT$1.85 billion by mixing many of its high-priced products with cheaper cottonseed oil and had misled consumers by deliberately mislabeling the items.
Yeh Yen-po (葉彥伯), head of the county’s Public Health Bureau, said that Chang Chi must pay the fine within a month unless it appeals and wins.
The Changhua District Prosecutors’ Office has indicted Chang Chi’s top executives for fraud and violating public health laws, and is seeking a court fine of NT$1.85 billion. If the court agrees, Chang Chi could face total fines of NT$3.7 billion, an amount that could bring down the business.
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