The Taichung City Government Health Bureau reportedly inspected Central Union Oil Corp’s (中聯油脂) facilities six times in four years, yet conducted oil sampling on just one occasion. This fully exposes that local inspections have become little more than a formality, and food safety oversight a mere perfunctory procedure. When the local government not only neglects its sampling responsibility outlined under the Act Governing Food Safety and Sanitation (食品安全衛生管理法), but later demands an apology from the central government and calls for the resignation of officials, it fails to address public concerns and highlights how Taichung Mayor Lu Shiow-yen’s (盧秀燕) administration seeks to shift its legal responsibilities into a political confrontation to conceal its own inadequate governance.
Article 41 of the Act Governing Food Safety and Sanitation (食品安全衛生管理法) expressly grants local health authorities the statutory power to enter factories to conduct inspections, collect samples for testing and require the submission of relevant records and documentation. Once food products enter production or processing within a local jurisdiction, the local government assumes the primary, independent and inescapable responsibility of supervision — it does not passively await instructions from the central government.
Thus, the Taichung Health Bureau’s defense that large-scale oil processing plants fall within the scope of routine self-inspection by operators and that it acted in coordination with central government inspection programs conflates two different legal responsibilities: corporate self-management and governmental regulatory oversight. Self-inspection constitutes the first level of quality control, an obligation that businesses are legally obligated to fulfill, whereas government inspections are the third level of quality control and serve as the public authority’s defensive line. The three-level quality control system exists because the law never presumes that businesses can fully monitor themselves — rather, the government must actively investigate to mitigate and fill any potential regulatory gaps.
What deserves scrutiny is not merely the number of inspections, but whether they fulfill their gatekeeping function. Inspections limited to reviewing documents and Good Hygienic Practices compliance, without robust and unannounced sampling of high-risk food businesses, cannot provide effective oversight.
Chemical contaminants such as benzopyrene can only be detected through reliable sampling and laboratory testing, not paperwork alone.
By presenting on-site inspections alone as proof of adequate quality control, the Lu administration equates completing procedures with comprehensive supervision.
If Taichung conducted only one random sampling of large-scale oil manufacturers in four years, the question is why it failed to exercise its own inspection powers, exposing its “zero tolerance” policy as merely a political slogan.
When local inspections become mere formalities and risk detection proves inadequate, demanding an apology from the central government is not seeking accountability — it is shirking responsibility. What the public truly hopes to see is not politicians pointing fingers at each other, but rather the central and local governments each bearing their legal responsibilities.
Before busying itself by demanding the central government take accountability, the Lu administration should first honestly assess whether it properly fulfilled its regulatory obligations.
Yeh Yu-cheng is a secretary at the Pingtung County Public Health Bureau.
Translated by Kyra Gustavsen
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