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.
Right-wing political scientist Laura Fernandez on Sunday won Costa Rica’s presidential election by a landslide, after promising to crack down on rising violence linked to the cocaine trade. Fernandez’s nearest rival, economist Alvaro Ramos, conceded defeat as results showed the ruling party far exceeding the threshold of 40 percent needed to avoid a runoff. With 94 percent of polling stations counted, the political heir of outgoing Costa Rican President Rodrigo Chaves had captured 48.3 percent of the vote compared with Ramos’ 33.4 percent, the Supreme Electoral Tribunal said. As soon as the first results were announced, members of Fernandez’s Sovereign People’s Party
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) plans to make advanced 3-nanometer chips in Japan, stepping up its semiconductor manufacturing roadmap in the country in a triumph for Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s technology ambitions. TSMC is to adopt cutting-edge technology for its second wafer fab in Kumamoto, company chairman C.C. Wei (魏哲家) said yesterday. That is an upgrade from an original blueprint to produce 7-nanometer chips by late next year, people familiar with the matter said. TSMC began mass production at its first plant in Japan’s Kumamoto in late 2024. Its second fab, which is still under construction, was originally focused on
EMERGING FIELDS: The Chinese president said that the two countries would explore cooperation in green technology, the digital economy and artificial intelligence Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) yesterday called for an “equal and orderly multipolar world” in the face of “unilateral bullying,” in an apparent jab at the US. Xi was speaking during talks in Beijing with Uruguayan President Yamandu Orsi, the first South American leader to visit China since US special forces captured then-Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro last month — an operation that Beijing condemned as a violation of sovereignty. Orsi follows a slew of leaders to have visited China seeking to boost ties with the world’s second-largest economy to hedge against US President Donald Trump’s increasingly unpredictable administration. “The international situation is fraught
Opposition parties not passing defense funding harms Taiwan’s national security, two US senators said separately in rare public criticism. “I am disappointed to see Taiwan’s opposition parties in parliament [the legislature] slash President [William] Lai’s (賴清德) defense budget so dramatically,” Roger Wicker, a Republican who chairs the US Senate Armed Forces Committee, said on social media. “The original proposal funded urgently needed weapons systems. Taiwan’s parliament should reconsider — especially with rising Chinese threats,” he added. Wicker’s post linked to an article published by Bloomberg that said that the two opposition parties’ move was “potentially jeopardizing the purchases of billions of dollars of
RSS