In response to a demonstration in Taipei on Saturday, in which protesters demanded better food safety, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) yesterday said that it understood the demands and would take them seriously, adding that advertisements for food products that are known to be tainted would no longer be aired.
About 2,000 people took to the streets in protest against the Ting Hsin International Group (頂新集團), amid concerns over food safety and a new push to boycott the controversial food conglomerate.
While demonstrators demanded that the government should prohibit companies that were found guilty in food safety cases from selling their food products, the FDA said that according to Article 52 of the Act Governing Food Safety and Sanitation (食品安全衛生管理法), food products that could not pass inspections would be recalled and products with serious defects would be confiscated and destroyed.
Companies that manufacture food products that seriously violate the safety code would not be allowed to advertise those products in the media, including radio, print media and the Internet, it said.
The demonstrators also demanded that people found guilty in a food safety case should be barred from operating a food company and that any illegal profits be confiscated.
In response, the FDA said Article 44 of the act stipulates that the government can force companies involved in a serious violation of the law to terminate or suspend their business for a certain period of time, as well as revoke all or part of the items listed in their registrations — including company, business, factory or food business registrations — and that they would be barred from applying for a new registration for a year.
The FDA said that the demands for protecting the rights of employees in case a company is forced to shut down after being found guilty in a food safety case would need to be answered by the Ministry of Labor and the Ministry of Justice.
The FDA said that policies aimed at guaranteeing food safety are being enforced and that it would continue to improve and refine its food safety management to gain public recognition.
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
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