The cooking oil scandal involving several of Ting Hsin International Group’s (頂新國際集團) subsidiaries could intensify as the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) awaits results of tests on the firms’ oil products for dioxin, amid criticism that the agency dragged its feet on the testing.
The Changhua District Prosecutors’ Office collected samples of cooking oils at Ting Hsin Oil and Fat Industrial Co’s (頂新製油) Pingtung factory on Oct. 10 and Oct. 23.
The second set of samples was reportedly prompted by an anonymous tip-off from a Vietnam-based Taiwanese businessman that the animal feed oils Ting Hsin Oil had imported from oil manufacturer Dai Hanh Phuc Co (大幸福公司) in that country were contaminated with ingredients of “Agent Orange.”
Agent Orange was one of several herbicides and defoliants used in aerial spraying by the US military during the Vietnam War in Vietnam, eastern Laos and parts of Cambodia to eliminate forest cover that could hide North Vietnamese troops or crops that could feed them.
The use of such herbicides and defoliants has been blamed for hundreds of thousands of cases of deaths, illnesses and birth defects.
“The FDA received seven samples of Ting Hsin Oil’s refined and unrefined lard and beef tallow on Oct. 24, before receiving five more samples of the company’s coconut oil and beef tallow imported from Australia the next day,” FDA interim Director-General Chiang Yu-mei (姜郁美) told a news conference in Taipei.
Chiang said the FDA sent the two batches of samples to its laboratory on Monday and yesterday respectively to test for dioxin or dioxin-like polychlorinated biphenyls.
“The test results are expected within two weeks,” Chiang said.
The agency did not explain for the 11-day delay in sending the samples for dioxin screening, for which it has been criticized.
Chang Gung Memorial Hospital toxicologist Yen Tsung-hai (顏宗海) said Agent Orange contained dioxin, which has been dubbed the “poison of the century” and has been proven by the WHO to be a cancer-linked hazard to humans.
“Dioxin has a long half-life in animals and can easily enter the human food chain. Research has linked exposure to the substance to liver and skin diseases, impaired immune and endocrine systems, as well as an increased risk of miscarriage and fetal abnormalities,” Yen 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:
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