The Changhua District Prosecutors’ Office yesterday indicted Chang Chi Foodstuff Factory Co (大統長基) chairman Kao Cheng-li (高振利) on charges of fraud and violation of the Act Governing Food Sanitation (食品衛生管理法) for allegedly adulterating the company’s edible oil products.
For up to seven years, Kao allegedly blended edible oil products with chlorophyllin and cheap cottonseed oil, which is toxic if unrefined, prosecutors said.
Prosecutors accuse Kao of pocketing approximately NT$1.8 billion (US$61.2 million) as a result.
The Ministry of Justice inventoried and froze Kao’s financial assets after allegations triggered a nationwide food scare that could implicate other oil manufacturers.
Meanwhile, the Changhua County Public Health Bureau yesterday launched an investigation into fresh allegations that Chang Chi’s satay sauce products were made from moldy shiitake mushroom stems and fish frozen for two decades.
The allegations were made by Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Wei Ming-ku (魏明谷) at a press conference yesterday.
Citing an anonymous whistleblower, Wei said common ingredients in Taiwanese-style satay sauce include peanuts, shiitake mushrooms and fish, but Kao, in an attempt to cut production costs, allegedly imported broad beans from Vietnam and Thailand as a cheaper substitute for peanuts, before mixing them with moldy shiitake mushroom stipes and long-frozen imported fish.
“To make the sauce, broad beans and mushroom stipes have to first be deep-fried at a high temperature, a process that could cause the fungus on the mushrooms to produce aflatoxin, a mold known to increase people’s risk of developing liver cancer, suffer tissue bleeding or loss of appetite,” Wei said.
Wei urged that the factory where the sauce is made be shut down.
In response, bureau director Yeh Yen-po (葉彥伯) said the bureau had sent health inspectors to examine the Changhua-based company’s factory in Lugang Township (鹿港) yesterday, where its production lines for satay sauce are situated.
“Satay sauce is made from a variety of ingredients and our health inspectors are trying to understand how the company manufactures the product,” Yeh said.
According to the nutritional information label on Chang Chi’s satay sauce, it contains soybean oil, garlic, dried onions, peanuts, chili powder, salt and fish, Yeh said, adding that the bureau would ascertain whether the information was correct.
In related developments, the Ministry of Economic Affairs’ Central Region Office yesterday announced that it had stripped Chang Chi’s Lugang factory of its tourism factory status.
Chang Chi has two factories in the Changhua Coastal Industrial Park (彰濱工業區), one in Lugang, which mostly manufactures soy sauce, and the other in Siansi Township (線西), which produces the company’s edible oil.
The Siansi factory was shut down by the county’s health bureau last Saturday in accordance with Articles 44, 45 and 47 of the Act Governing Food Sanitation, which the company is accused of violating, the office said in a press release.
“Although no irregularities have been discovered at the company’s Lugang factory, given the severity of misconduct at its Siansi factory, the office rescinded the Lugang plant’s tourism factory status on Tuesday in a bid to protect the image of other tourism factories and to ensure food safety,” the office said.
The office added that Chang Chi transformed its Lugang factory into a tourism plant in 2011 without ministry approval and that it was only officially granted tourism factory status this April.
The Legislative Yuan’s Finance Committee yesterday approved proposed amendments to the Amusement Tax Act (娛樂稅法) that would abolish taxes on films, cultural activities and competitive sporting events, retaining the fee only for dance halls and golf courses. The proposed changes would set the maximum tax rate for dance halls and golf courses at 50 and 20 percent respectively, with local governments authorized to suspend the levies. Article 2 of the act says that “amusement tax shall be levied on tickets sold or fees charged by amusement places, facilities or activities” in six categories: “Cinema; professional singing, story-telling, dancing, circus, magic show, acrobatics
Tainan, Taipei and New Taipei City recorded the highest fines nationwide for illegal accommodations in the first quarter of this year, with fines issued in the three cities each exceeding NT$7 million (US$220,639), Tourism Administration data showed. Among them, Taipei had the highest number of illegal short-term rental units, with 410. There were 3,280 legally registered hotels nationwide in the first quarter, down by 14 properties, or 0.43 percent, from a year earlier, likely indicating operators exiting the market, the agency said. However, the number of unregistered properties rose to 1,174, including 314 illegal hotels and 860 illegal short-term rental
INFLATION UP? The IMF said CPI would increase to 1.5 percent this year, while the DGBAS projected it would rise to 1.68 percent, with GDP per capita of US$44,181 The IMF projected Taiwan’s real GDP would grow 5.2 percent this year, up from its 2.1 percent outlook in January, despite fears of global economic disruptions sparked by the US-Iran conflict. Taiwan’s consumer price index (CPI) is projected to increase to 1.5 percent, while unemployment would be 3.4 percent, roughly in line with estimates for Asia as a whole, the international body wrote in its Global Economic Outlook Report published in the US on Monday. The figures are comparatively better than the IMF outlook for the rest of the world, which pegged real GDP growth at 3.1 percent, down from 3.3 percent
ECONOMIC COERCION: Such actions are often inconsistently applied, sometimes resumed, and sometimes just halted, the Presidential Office spokeswoman said The government backs healthy and orderly cross-strait exchanges, but such arrangements should not be made with political conditions attached and never be used as leverage for political maneuvering or partisan agendas, Presidential Office spokeswoman Karen Kuo (郭雅慧) said yesterday. Kuo made the remarks after China earlier in the day announced 10 new “incentive measures” for Taiwan, following a landmark meeting between Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) and Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) in Beijing on Friday. The measures, unveiled by China’s Xinhua news agency, include plans to resume individual travel by residents of Shanghai and China’s Fujian
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