The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) yesterday said that local health agencies are investigating the 117 restaurants and traditional market vendors that have allegedly purchased and used lamb mixed with pork.
FDA interim Director-General Chiang Yu-mei (姜郁美) said the Greater Kaohsiung District Prosecutors’ Office has provided a list of 117 stores to health authorities nationwide and that the agencies are verifying the quantity of the adulterated lamb they procured.
“The adulterated lamb is mostly frozen meat and must be removed from store shelves. Businesspeople who produce or sell adulterated or counterfeited foods are subject to a maximum fine of NT$50 million (US$1.67 million) and a prison term of up to five years,” Chiang said.
Chiang made the remarks one day after the Greater Kaohsiung Government’s Department of Health released the results of its random test on sliced lamb products in the city, with the test showing that two of the four lamb samples tested were found to contain traces of pork.
The department then referred the two meat vendors that sold the problematic lamb products — one in the city’s Fongshan District (鳳山) and the other in Zuoying District (左營) — to prosecutors for further investigation.
According to prosecutors’ preliminary investigation, the two meat vendors purchased the adulterated lamb from Kaohsiung’s Ching Lung Meat Co (金龍肉品) and New Taipei City’s Hua Yuan International Co (華元國際) respectively.
While Ching Lung simply mixed lamb with pork, Hua Yuan was found to have manufactured three different grades of lamb, categorized as Grade A, Grade B and Grade C, prosecutors said.
Prosecutors said the Grade A and Grade B lamb was mixed with pork jowl and minced beef, while Grade C was completely pork, but laced with lamb oil.
Chiang said as lamb is pricier than pork, money-driven businesspeople often seek to increase their profits by mixing the former with the latter.
“Given that many people may have their own dietary habits or are not allowed to consume certain kinds of meat due to their religious beliefs, we solemnly urge meat peddlers to label their products truthfully and in accordance with regulations,” Chiang said.
In related news, the Consumers’ Foundation yesterday renewed its calls for a revision of a draft amendment to the Act Governing Food Safety and Sanitation (食品安全衛生管理法) that would allow the often-amended law to better protect consumers.
“The latest draft amendment to the act, which has been referred to in cross-party negotiations, should seek to address the blindspots of the act concerning the consumer compensation mechanism,” foundation chairperson Lu Yun (陸雲) said.
Lu said current regulations stipulate that if a consumer cannot present evidence proving a problematic food product has caused substantial damage, he or she could only receive compensation ranging from NT$500 to NT$30,000 per person.
“Accordingly, the foundation urges lawmakers not only to increase the compensation by 10 times, but also to transfer the legal responsibility for presenting evidence on the health effects of the products in question to its manufacturer,” Lu said.
Lu also said the government should publish a food safety white paper each year.
Foundation vice chairman Yu Kai-hsiung (游開雄) cited as an example a March 2012 lawsuit filed by the foundation on behalf of 568 people involved in the 2011 plasticizer food scare, demanding a collective compensation of NT$2.4 billion from 37 companies implicated in the scandal.
However, in October last year, the Hsinchu District Court ordered the firms to offer compensation of only about NT$1.2 million to the defendants, Yu said.
Yu said the ruling was made based on the grounds that the affected consumers could not find evidence suggesting that the beverages laced with plasticizer had been detrimental to their health.
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