The New Taipei City Government Education Bureau yesterday said that 68 schools in the city had served foodstuffs containing Chang Guann Co’s (強冠企業) allegedly tainted lard oil to students last semester.
“The tainted food products provided included Chi Mei Frozen Food Co’s (奇美食品) dumplings and pork buns, Eagle Cold Storage Enterprise Co’s (裕國冷凍冷藏) mushroom sauces and Tiger Brand Cheng Tung Industrial Co’s (虎牌正通) rice vermicelli,” bureau Director-General Ling Teng-chiao (林騰蛟) told a press conference.
Lin said among the schools, 13 had continued to serve the foodstuffs to 19,000 students for five days after classes started this semester on Sept. 1.
He declined to release the names of the schools, saying only that the bureau was still calculating the number of people affected.
Eagle Cold Storage, Chi Mei and Tiger Brand are among the 1,256 companies that have been identified as purchasing or producing food products from some of the 782 tonnes of lard oil Chang Guann allegedly manufactured using recycled waste oil collected from restaurant fryers.
On Tuesday, the Taipei City Government’s Department of Education also announced that 30 schools in the city had either sold the products at their campus stores or served them for lunch.
Separately yesterday, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) released a report on its investigation into Chang Guann’s allegedly illegal sale of contaminated lard oil.
“As of yesterday, the FDA has tracked down 569.4 tonnes of the deficient lard oil, which was used to manufacture 246 types of foodstuffs, and has sealed 161 tonnes for investigation. In addition, it has recalled 250.9 tonnes of food products contaminated with the oil, of which 6.9 tonnes have been destroyed,” FDA’s Northern Center for Regional Administration Director Feng Jun-lan (馮潤蘭) said.
Feng said 15 of the 1,256 companies named in the scandal have been referred to judicial authorities for investigation, as they either denied they had bought the oil or claimed they did not remember.
Local health departments have also issued a total of NT$24.5 million (US$820,000) in fines for companies that were found to have used the oil, but refused to cooperate with the investigation at first, Feng said.
“The FDA has concluded its probe into Chang Guann’s role in the scandal after no tainted oil or products were discovered at the 8,554 factories, street vendors, restaurants and stores we inspected in the past few days,” Feng said.
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:
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