The Taipei City Government yesterday announced a new standard operating procedure requiring food companies to report food safety issues to the city government within 24 hours of discovering them.
The procedure stipulates that food companies that have been informed of a product recall by a health authority or received a large number of consumer complaints about a product must report the case to the Taipei Department of Health within 24 hours and remove the product from the shelves within 48 hours.
The procedure is to take effect next month and companies that fail to meet the requirement could be fined between NT$30,000 and NT$100,000.
Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) said that members of the American Chamber of Commerce in Taipei (AmCham) at a meeting in January said that there was confusion over the mandatory reporting of problematic food products.
The AmCham members told him that some foreign food companies have set up branches in Taiwan, but they do not clearly understand the requirements about the reporting of food safety problems, Ko said.
He said he asked the department to come up with a clear and feasible standard operating procedure.
According to the Act Governing Food Safety and Sanitation (食品安全衛生管理法), food companies must report unsafe or problematic food products to the local health authority, Food and Drug Division Director Wang Ming-li (王明理) said, but added that the definition was not clear enough, so Taipei has taken the first step to clarify it.
Wang said that in a hypothetical case similar to a food scandal involving fipronil-tainted eggs last year, chain supermarkets in the city that had sold tainted eggs would have had to notify the department within 24 hours under the new requirement.
In related news, Taipei residents’ favorite breakfast takeout is sandwiches, followed by hamburgers and danbing (蛋餅, egg pancakes), a survey commissioned by the department has found.
Fifty-eight percent of respondents said that they knew about the city’s ingredient registration platform, the survey of 574 Taipei residents found.
According to the survey, 88 percent of respondents said that disclosing the ingredients on a food product’s packaging and the packaging material increases their willingness to buy the product.
The respondents said their foremost expectation from breakfast restaurant employees is wearing a mask to ensure food hygiene, the poll found.
The department said it also asked breakfast restaurant chains with at least five branches in the city — 24 restaurant operators and 1,000 branches in all — to register the source of the ingredients used in their beverages, as well as sandwiches, hamburgers and danbing, on the department’s online ingredient registration platform.
Taiwan is to receive the first batch of Lockheed Martin F-16 Block 70 jets from the US late this month, a defense official said yesterday, after a year-long delay due to a logjam in US arms deliveries. Completing the NT$247.2 billion (US$7.69 billion) arms deal for 66 jets would make Taiwan the third nation in the world to receive factory-fresh advanced fighter jets of the same make and model, following Bahrain and Slovakia, the official said on condition of anonymity. F-16 Block 70/72 are newly manufactured F-16 jets built by Lockheed Martin to the standards of the F-16V upgrade package. Republic of China
Taiwan-Japan Travel Passes are available for use on public transit networks in the two countries, Taoyuan Metro Corp said yesterday, adding that discounts of up to 7 percent are available. Taoyuan Metro, the Taipei MRT and Japan’s Keisei Electric Railway teamed up to develop the pass. Taoyuan Metro operates the Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport MRT Line, while Keisei Electric Railway offers express services between Tokyo’s Narita Airport, and the Keisei Ueno and Nippori stations in the Japanese capital, as well as between Narita and Haneda airports. The basic package comprises one one-way ticket on the Taoyuan MRT Line and one Skyliner ticket on
A new tropical storm formed late yesterday near Guam and is to approach closest to Taiwan on Thursday, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. Tropical Storm Pulasan became the 14th named storm of the year at 9:25pm yesterday, the agency said. As of 8am today, it was near Guam traveling northwest at 21kph, it said. The storm’s structure is relatively loose and conditions for strengthening are limited, WeatherRisk analyst Wu Sheng-yu (吳聖宇) said on Facebook. Its path is likely to be similar to Typhoon Bebinca, which passed north of Taiwan over Japan’s Ryukyu Islands and made landfall in Shanghai this morning, he said. However, it
Starlux Airlines, Taiwan’s newest international carrier, has announced it would apply to join the Oneworld global airline alliance before the end of next year. In an investor conference on Monday, Starlux Airlines chief executive officer Glenn Chai (翟健華) said joining the alliance would help it access Taiwan. Chai said that if accepted, Starlux would work with other airlines in the alliance on flight schedules, passenger transits and frequent flyer programs. The Oneworld alliance has 13 members, including American Airlines, British Airways, Cathay Pacific and Qantas, and serves more than 900 destinations in 170 territories. Joining Oneworld would also help boost