The Food and Drug Administration on Friday accused a Kaohsiung man surnamed Lee (李) of selling tap water in recycled plastic bottles and disguising it as the product Drink Water (丹楓之水).
The agency said Lee had been doing this for more than 10 years, adding that he faces a potential fine of between NT$30,000 and NT$3 million (US$1,026 and US$102,631).
The Sanitation Standard for Food Utensils, Containers and Packages Act (食品器具容器包裝衛生標準) stipulates that utensils or food packaging made of plastic cannot be reused.
By reusing plastic bottles with branded logos and filling them with tap water, Lee breached Act 17 of the Act Governing Food Safety and Sanitation (食品安全衛生管理法), the agency said.
Lee is also accused of breaching Article 8, Subparagraph 1 and Article 41 of the Act Governing Food Safety and Sanitation and has been ordered by the Kaohsiung City Government to sanitize his home and stop selling water in recycled bottles, agency Southern Region Management Center Director Lu Chun-ju (呂昀儒) said.
While inspecting Lee’s residence, the center found several empty bottles, a box full of bottle caps and empty cardboard boxes branded with the Drink Water logo, Lu said.
The Kaohsiung Department of Health took samples from four separate bottles to see if the contents met health and sanitation standards, and the rest was impounded by the Second Special Police Corps, Lu said.
Police are still investigating which retail stores might have bought water from Lee, the agency said.
Actual Drink Water caps should be half-translucent, while Lee’s bottles had milky-white caps, the administration said.
Yan Tsung-hai (顏宗海) a clinical toxicology doctor at Linkou Chang Gung Medical Hospital, said unsterilized tap water can contain microorganisms and ingestion could cause acute gastroenteritis, resulting in nausea, vomiting, diarrhea and stomach pains.
Regulations prohibit repeated use of plastic bottles, utensils and packaging made from polyethylene terephthalate, Yan said, adding that it is identified as a No. 1 recyclable under the international resin identification coding system.
Plastic bottles are considered one-time use items and are designed to be difficult to clean and disinfect, Yan said, adding that if the bottles had been exposed to heat at any time, users might have ingested plasticizers — chemical additives used to make plastic more pliable.
A magnitude 6.4 earthquake struck off the coast of Hualien County in eastern Taiwan at 7pm yesterday, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. The epicenter of the temblor was at sea, about 69.9km south of Hualien County Hall, at a depth of 30.9km, it said. There were no immediate reports of damage resulting from the quake. The earthquake’s intensity, which gauges the actual effect of a temblor, was highest in Taitung County’s Changbin Township (長濱), where it measured 5 on Taiwan’s seven-tier intensity scale. The quake also measured an intensity of 4 in Hualien, Nantou, Chiayi, Yunlin, Changhua and Miaoli counties, as well as
Credit departments of farmers’ and fishers’ associations blocked a total of more than NT$180 million (US$6.01 million) from being lost to scams last year, National Police Agency (NPA) data showed. The Agricultural Finance Agency (AFA) said last week that staff of farmers’ and fishers’ associations’ credit departments are required to implement fraud prevention measures when they serve clients at the counter. They would ask clients about personal financial management activities whenever they suspect there might be a fraud situation, and would immediately report the incident to local authorities, which would send police officers to the site to help, it said. NPA data showed
ENERGY RESILIENCE: Although Alaska is open for investments, Taiwan is sourcing its gas from the Middle East, and the sea routes carry risks, Ho Cheng-hui said US government officials’ high-profile reception of a Taiwanese representative at the Alaska Sustainable Energy Conference indicated the emergence of an Indo-Pacific energy resilience alliance, an academic said. Presidential Office Secretary-General Pan Men-an (潘孟安) attended the conference in Alaska on Thursday last week at the invitation of the US government. Pan visited oil and gas facilities with senior US officials, including US Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum, US Secretary of Energy Chris Wright, Alaska Governor Mike Dunleavy and US Senator Daniel Sullivan. Pan attending the conference on behalf of President William Lai (賴清德) shows a significant elevation in diplomatic representation,
The Taipei City Reserve Command yesterday initiated its first-ever 14-day recall of some of the city’s civilian service reservists, who are to undergo additional training on top of refresher courses. The command said that it rented sites in Neihu District (內湖), including the Taipei Tennis Center, for the duration of the camp to optimize tactical positioning and accommodate the size of the battalion of reservists. A battalion is made up of four companies of more than 200 reservists each, it said. Aside from shooting drills at a range in New Taipei City’s Linkou District (林口), the remainder of the training would be at
RSS