The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) yesterday issued a three-day ultimatum to firms that have sold or manufactured food containing six Beei Hae Oil and Fats Co (北海油脂) lard-based products that may have been mixed with inferior oil: Pull the items off their shelves or face fines.
“Companies that have purchased the six kinds of potentially problematic Beei Hae Oil lard products are required to inform local health authorities about the quantity they procured and the food products they have made with it by 6pm on Wednesday [today],” the agency’s interim Director-General Chiang Yu-mei (姜郁美) told a news conference in Taipei.
Chiang said that in line with the Act Governing Food Safety and Sanitation (食品安全衛生管理法), the firms must pull all potentially adulterated products from store shelves by midnight on Friday or face fines ranging from NT$60,000 to NT$50 million (US$1,965 to US$1.6 million).
Photo: CNA
Chiang’s remarks came one day after the Greater Tainan Government’s Department of Health ordered a nationwide recall of the six Beei Hae Oil lard products, whose de facto owner, Lu Ching-hsieh (呂青協), has been accused by Tainan prosecutors of using 582 tonnes of inedible oils and animal feed-grade beef tallow to produce 1,275 tonnes of cooking lard.
Lu and his wife, Lu Huang Li-hua (呂黃麗華), the nominal head of Beei Hae Oil, have been held incommunicado since Oct. 18 and Oct. 30 respectively on charges of fraud and violating the act.
Chiang said Tainan’s health department is still trying to track the downstream buyers of the six questionable products, which could have been sold to food processors nationwide and came in a variety of package sizes ranging up to 180kg.
Meanwhile, Greater Tainan Mayor William Lai (賴清德) of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) dismissed accusations by Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislators that the city’s health department had denied a request from the Tainan District Prosecutors’ Office to instigate a preventive recall of Beei Hae Oil’s lard products.
“It was the city’s health department that referred Beei Hae Oil’s case to the prosecutors’ office for investigation after it found the Tainan-based company’s business receipts to be suspicious,” Lai told a news conference in the city.
There was no mention of a recall request when the health department’s officials met with prosecutors to discuss the case on Oct. 27 and again on Monday.
“In addition, it is the mandate of the Ministry of Health and Welfare [to initiate a recall], which is why the prosecutors’ office explicitly said [in a press release yesterday] that it did not have the right to issue such a request,” Lai said.
The city government did not receive a list of Beei Hae Oil’s downstream buyers from the prosecutors until Monday, Lai said.
City health officials immediately notified the ministry and launched a nationwide recall of the suspect products as soon as they received the information, he said.
Additional reporting by CNA
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