Taiwanese fruit exports to Malaysia and Indonesia are expected to exceed NT$44.8 million (US$1.47 million) by Sunday, the Council of Agriculture said in a report on Saturday.
The forecast came after the council commissioned the Commerce Development Research Institute to hold a “Taiwanese Produce and Halal Food” exhibition, which ends on Sunday, at the Mercato Supermarket in the Pavilion Kuala Lumpur shopping center in Malaysia.
The council’s Department of International Affairs said that it had chosen Mercato, a subsidiary of Giant Hypermarket, because it specializes in supplying fresh produce and boutique products from around the world.
The Mercato branch at the Pavilion Kuala Lumpur was chosen because it is a renowned shopping center that is on par with Taipei 101, it said.
The exhibition features in-season produce, such as pineapples, custard apples and citrus fruits, it added.
The department said that it has invited a renowned local chef, Collin Edward Lim, to create Malaysian dishes using Taiwanese produce.
The council in September last year launched an initiative to research the marketability of Taiwanese produce in Muslim regions, which has gained the participation of 30 individuals and organizations, department head Tang Shu-hua (唐淑華) said.
The project provides participants with an export platform and assists them with expanding their market share based on their order niche points, Tang said.
The council said that it would continue to invest in and assist program participants, vowing to introduce the excellence of Taiwanese agricultural products to Malaysia and other Muslim-majority countries.
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
REVENGE TRAVEL: A surge in ticket prices should ease this year, but inflation would likely keep tickets at a higher price than before the pandemic Scoot is to offer six additional flights between Singapore and Northeast Asia, with all routes transiting Taipei from April 1, as the budget airline continues to resume operations that were paused during the COVID-19 pandemic, a Scoot official said on Thursday. Vice president of sales Lee Yong Sin (李榮新) said at a gathering with reporters in Taipei that the number of flights from Singapore to Japan and South Korea with a stop in Taiwan would increase from 15 to 21 each week. That change means the number of the Singapore-Taiwan-Tokyo flights per week would increase from seven to 12, while Singapore-Taiwan-Seoul
BAD NEIGHBORS: China took fourth place among countries spreading disinformation, with Hong Kong being used as a hub to spread propaganda, a V-Dem study found Taiwan has been rated as the country most affected by disinformation for the 11th consecutive year in a study by the global research project Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem). The nation continues to be a target of disinformation originating from China, and Hong Kong is increasingly being used as a base from which to disseminate that disinformation, the report said. After Taiwan, Latvia and Palestine ranked second and third respectively, while Nicaragua, North Korea, Venezuela and China, in that order, were the countries that spread the most disinformation, the report said. Each country listed in the report was given a score,
POOR PREPARATION: Cultures can form on food that is out of refrigeration for too long and cooking does not reliably neutralize their toxins, an epidemiologist said Medical professionals yesterday said that suspected food poisoning deaths revolving around a restaurant at Far Eastern Department Store Xinyi A13 Store in Taipei could have been caused by one of several types of bacterium. Ho Mei-shang (何美鄉), an epidemiologist at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Biomedical Sciences, wrote on Facebook that the death of a 39-year-old customer of the restaurant suggests the toxin involved was either “highly potent or present in massive large quantities.” People who ate at the restaurant showed symptoms within hours of consuming the food, suggesting that the poisoning resulted from contamination by a toxin and not infection of the