Flavor Full Food Inc (富味鄉), a major local sesame oil producer, has admitted having adulterated one of its products sold on the domestic market with cheaper cottonseed oil, health officials said yesterday.
The company also admitted to adding flavoring agents to one of its peanut oil products, officials from the New Taipei City (新北市) Government’s Public Health Department said, adding that the company has been fined a total of NT$8 million (US$272,260) for 25 violations.
Prosecutors charged the firm’s owner, Chen Wen-nan (陳文南), with violating the Act Governing Food Sanitation (食品衛生管理法). Chen was released on NT$2.5 million bail yesterday afternoon.
Photo: Liu Hsiao-hsin, Taipei Times
Chen later yesterday also offered a public apology for the company’s “severe negligence,” adding that the products adulterated with cottonseed oil were not harmful to consumers.
Flavor Full is the only importer of crude cottonseed oil in Taiwan besides Chang Chi Foodstuff Factory Co (大統長基), which is also involved in the current adulterated oil scandal.
Suspicions over Flavor Full products were raised after Chang Chi was found to have refined the cottonseed oil and then blended it with its Tatung-brand edible oil products to save production costs.
Flavor Full had previously claimed that the cottonseed oil it processed was only for export and that the oil was never used for products destined for domestic consumption.
However, the company admitted to New Taipei City Government investigators on Wednesday that it had lied.
The city government inspected a Flavor Full warehouse in the city’s Wugu District (五股) on Monday and sampled 11 products to be sent for testing.
The results are expected in a week’s time.
Meanwhile, the Ministry of Health and Welfare has launched an investigation into all 163 edible oil producers in Taiwan.
As of yesterday, 138 of them had been inspected, Minister of Health and Welfare Chiu Wen-ta (邱文達) said.
Separately yesterday, former Democratic Progressive Party chairman Shih Ming-te (施明德) said that he and a group of friends would file a class-action lawsuit against Flavor Full Food to seek compensation over its adulterated edible oil products.
Shih said he paid close attention to health and food safety after being diagnosed with liver cancer in 2001, and began to purchase only natural organic products. He said that his household’s organic sesame oil was all from Flavor Full, adding that he had also recommended Flavor Full Food products to his friends.
Shih said he would donate any damages awarded from the litigation to charitable organizations.
Taiwan’s Lee Chia-hao (李佳豪) on Sunday won a silver medal at the All England Open Badminton Championships in Birmingham, England, a career best. Lee, 25, took silver in the final of the men’s singles against world No. 1 Shi Yuqi (石宇奇) of China, who won 21-17, 21-19 in a tough match that lasted 51 minutes. After the match, the Taiwanese player, who ranks No. 22 in the world, said it felt unreal to be challenging an opponent of Shi’s caliber. “I had to be in peak form, and constantly switch my rhythm and tactics in order to score points effectively,” he said. Lee got
EMBRACING TAIWAN: US lawmakers have introduced an act aiming to replace the use of ‘Chinese Taipei’ with ‘Taiwan’ across all Washington’s federal agencies A group of US House of Representatives lawmakers has introduced legislation to replace the term “Chinese Taipei” with “Taiwan” across all federal agencies. US Representative Byron Donalds announced the introduction of the “America supports Taiwan act,” which would mandate federal agencies adopt “Taiwan” in place of “Chinese Taipei,” a news release on his page on the US House of Representatives’ Web site said. US representatives Mike Collins, Barry Moore and Tom Tiffany are cosponsors of the legislation, US political newspaper The Hill reported yesterday. “The legislation is a push to normalize the position of Taiwan as an autonomous country, although the official US
CHANGE OF TONE: G7 foreign ministers dropped past reassurances that there is no change in the position of the G7 members on Taiwan, including ‘one China’ policies G7 foreign ministers on Friday took a tough stance on China, stepping up their language on Taiwan and omitting some conciliatory references from past statements, including to “one China” policies. A statement by ministers meeting in Canada mirrored last month’s Japan-US statement in condemning “coercion” toward Taiwan. Compared with a G7 foreign ministers’ statement in November last year, the statement added members’ concerns over China’s nuclear buildup, although it omitted references to their concerns about Beijing’s human rights abuses in Xinjiang, Tibet and Hong Kong. Also missing were references stressing the desire for “constructive and stable relations with China” and
‘CROWN JEWEL’: Washington ‘can delay and deter’ Chinese President Xi Jinping’s plans for Taiwan, but it is ‘a very delicate situation there,’ the secretary of state said US President Donald Trump is opposed to any change to Taiwan’s “status quo” by force or extortion and would maintain that policy, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio told the Hugh Hewitt Show host on Wednesday. The US’ policy is to maintain Taiwan’s “status quo” and to oppose any changes in the situation by force or extortion, Rubio said. Hewitt asked Rubio about the significance of Trump earlier this month speaking with Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (台積電) chairman C.C. Wei (魏哲家) at the White House, a meeting that Hewitt described as a “big deal.” Asked whether the meeting was an indication of the
RSS