Minister of Health and Welfare Chiu Wen-ta (邱文達) yesterday pledged that the ministry would finish registering food oil manufacturers, importers and upstream oil providers, as well as tightening self-management regulations for food oil companies, by Oct. 31.
He also apologized for the second time this week for the snowballing food scare that shook the nation, saying: “I will not shirk my responsibilities as a government official. The ministry is resolute in its actions to root out all evil.”
However, when asked whether he would resign over the food scare, he said that he would leave that decision to his superior.
Photo: Chang Chia-ming, Taipei Times
Food and Drugs Administration (FDA) Deputy Director-General Chiang Yu-mei (姜郁美) said the ministry is working on a registration system to monitor about 100 oil manufacturers and 500 importers in the nation, while enforcing what the ministry termed “first-tier quality control,” which stipulates that self-management measures must be completed by food oil companies before Oct. 31.
Citing the Regulations Governing Traceability of Foods and Relevant Products (食品及其相關產品追溯系統管理辦法), she said that businesses who report fraudulent information regarding their products to the registration system face a fine of up to NT$3 million (US$100,000).
Companies who are found to have committed serious violations risk having their registrations, as well as those of their factories and store fronts, revoked for one year, meaning that violators would be banned from conducting business during that term, she added.
The ministry also announced it would implement “second-tier” and “third-tier” quality control, with oil manufacturers to be evaluated by a third-party inspection agency by Jan. 1 next year, and edible oil manufacturing to be included in the Good Hygiene Practices inspection, she said.
Chiang said the ministry is working with the Ministry of Justice to increase penalties on manufacturers and importers that provide substandard edible oil, and the two ministries are seeking to end laws that prevent offenders from being subjected to repeated punishments.
Meanwhile, New Taipei City’s Department of Public Health yesterday announced the latest progress on its probe into Fang Fu’s (芳福) lard oil — which was allegedly manufactured with animal feed oil imported from Hong Kong by Chang Guann — revealing that Tyzex Food, a well-known glutinous oil rice vendor, acquired 8.67 tonnes of the feed oil-tainted lard, of which 8.05 tonnes were used in the making of its glutinous rice products.
The quantity and which items of Tyzek Food products were affected was still being verified as of press time.
The department also found Yu Jan Shin, a pastry and snack manufacturer based in Greater Taichung, manufactured six of its products using Fang Fu’s lard oil, including curry-stewed pie and mung bean and meat pastry.
The company’s popular crispy butter cake was not found to have been processed with tainted lard.
Kuang Ta Hsiang, a pork floss company, used 16 tonnes of Fang Fu lard oil it purchased in 14 of its pork floss and fried pork floss products, which amounted to 691 tonnes and that sold to supermarkets and other distribution channels across the nation, the department said.
The city yesterday removed 5,683kg of the company’s pork floss products from the shelves.
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
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
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