The Tainan Department of Health yesterday said it discovered a food company had been providing processed meat products made from expired pork and fish roe to several chain restaurants.
The department had received a report that Hsienyang (鮮洋食品) was storing ingredients and processed food that had already expired in a warehouse on the 14th floor of the Durban Department Store.
Inspectors from the department and the Food and Drug Administration’s Southern Center, as well as criminal investigators on Monday searched the warehouse and discovered large quantities of expired food.
Authorities found three types of expired processed products — 1,620 jars of caviar, 25 boxes of sausages and 15 boxes of cooked fish roe — and two types of expired ingredients — 893 boxes of pork (11kg per box) and 172 boxes of raw frozen cod roe (22.5kg per box) — in the warehouse, which investigators closed at 11pm that evening, the department said.
The warehouse has been sealed to keep items from being removed, as investigators are still examining its contents, the department added.
Department Commissioner Lin Pi-fen (林碧芬) said the company had purchased expired pork and raw fish roe, which it stored at the warehouse before turning them into caviar, sausages and cooked fish roe and sold as new food products.
As the raw frozen cod roe was bought from Taipei-based Heng Hsing Development Co (姮興開發) and the pork from Fuyo (福有企業), the department notified the Taipei Department of Health and asked it to trace the upstream vendors, she said.
Hsienyang supplied expired food products to chain restaurants such as Bravo Hot Pot (精彩火鍋), Dada Tea (大大茶樓), Jogoya (上閤屋) and No. 1 Wellington Street (威靈頓街1號) in six counties and cities, the department said, adding that it has notified the health bureaus in those areas to assist restaurants in removing expired products from their inventories.
The department said the company could face fines of between NT$60,000 and NT$200 million (US$1,774 and US$5.9 million) for breaches of the Act Governing Food Safety and Sanitation (食品安全衛生管理法).
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