The Taipei Department of Environmental Protection yesterday said it would fine 16 hypermarket branches over the stores’ failure to declare how they disposed of expired vegetables and meat products.
After a food safety scare in Pingtung on Wednesday, the agency has inspected all 16 hypermarkets across the city and found that none of the stores kept records of the amount or destination of expired food.
Nine Carrefour (家樂福) stores, three RT-Mart (大潤發) stores, three A-Mart (愛買) branches, as well as one Costco (好市多) store, were found to have committed the same violation.
Aside from Costco, which was still being verified at press time last night, none of the stores had used registered waste processing firms to dispose of expired food products, the results showed.
The stores have contravened Article 39 of the Waste Disposal Act (廢棄物清理法) for failing to keep records of expired food, which is punishable by a fine of between NT$6,000 and NT$30,000, the department said, adding that repeated fines are possible if the stores fail to make the necessary changes after a certain period of time.
The Pingtung County Public Health Bureau on Wednesday found that a farm in Wandan Township (萬丹) routinely stocked expired produce, including raw meat and fish, from hypermarkets in Kaohsiung before repackaging and selling the products to buffets and breakfast stores in Kaohsiung and Pingtung.
The Pingtung District Prosecutors’ Office on Friday held Wu Mei-niang (吳美) and her niece Kuo Lee Jo-lin (郭李柔琳), who allegedly handled the food, incommunicado, while Wu’s sons, Shen Yu-cheng (沈育正) and Shen Ho-chang (沈和昌), who allegedly transported the food, were released on bail of NT$200,000 and NT$120,000 respectively.
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