The local importer and distributor of Glacio Belgian ice cream — High Tip International Trade Co (振紳洋行) — has been fined NT$1.2 million (US$39,600) and ordered to temporarily suspend operations by the Taipei Department of Health for allegedly selling expired food products and operating without a factory registration certificate.
The Chinese-language Next Magazine yesterday reported that an employee of the company, surnamed Liu (劉), told the magazine that the company manager had asked employees to remove expired ice cream products from their original packaging and to repackage and sell them as new products to five-star hotels and wedding banquets.
Liu reported the incident to the health department last month, but the manager continued the practice, so she secretly recorded a video showing an employee using his bare hands to repackage ice cream in new packaging, the report said.
Liu also recorded a conversation she had with the manager about her concerns, in which the manager said that the expired products would not go bad if they are kept at the proper temperature and that there is a problem with the food regulations because expired ice cream products are still edible.
The health department said it had received the reports and that it inspected the company’s storage room and manufacturing site on Aug. 14 and Sept. 7.
Five types of expired ice cream products were found during the inspections and 430 items were sealed to keep them from being removed, it said.
The department then fined the company NT$1.2 million for contravening the Act Governing Food Safety and Sanitation (食品安全衛生管理法).
The department said it also ordered the company to suspend all operations because it did not have a factory registration certificate.
However, Liu told Next Magazine that the company had continued to deliver products to its coffee shop located in Pacific SOGO Department Store’s Zhongxiao Store in Taipei after it was told to suspend operations.
While the company claims its products are “imported with the original packaging,” a manager at the company, Lee Chen-sheng (李陳昇), said there is no problem with changing the packaging of a product to meet customers’ needs, as long as the food itself is still the original product.
“Ice cream can be kept for a long time without going bad, because we keep it at minus-18?C,” he said, adding that all the expired ice products are kept for the company’s workers to eat and they are not sold to costumers.
Food and Drugs Division Director Wang Ming-li (王明理) said the health department is likely to transfer the case to the Taipei District Prosecutors’ Office for further investigation.
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