Food vendors in traditional and nightmarkets are facing a bigger impact from the widening scare over the use of banned industrial ingredients in food than retail chains, according to operators in the retail sector.
Spokespersons for supermarket chains, including Carrefour and A.Mart, as wells as convenience store chains such as FamilyMart, said in separate interviews over the past few days that the discovery of a banned ingredient and an industry-grade preservative in food products has had a limited impact on their business in the past few weeks.
The chain stores said they can easily and immediately pull problematic products off their shelves. Their stores also often offer consumers several options for each product.
Consumers would keep shopping at their stores despite the food scare, they added.
However, for vendors at traditional markets or night markets, the situation is different because they often sell just one or two types of snacks and beverages, the retail chains said.
Consumers were unnerved by the discovery of maleic acid in popular food products such as rice noodles, hotpot ingredients and tapioca balls, which are used to make pearl milk tea.
The substance was later traced back to a modified starch containing maleic anhydride, a chemical used in the production of food packing materials.
Maleic anhydride is transformed into maleic acid when mixed with water and it use in modified starches is banned in Taiwan.
Meanwhile, Malaysian media reports say many stores that sell bubble milk tea drinks and Taiwanese desserts there have been hit by the starch contamination storm from Taiwan.
Coolblog, a popular dessert and beverage brand that has 250 outlets in Malaysia, has recorded a 20 percent drop in sales since the starch scandal broke in Taiwan last month, according to a Coolblog executive.
Last week, Malaysian health authorities announced a ban on the import of 11 Taiwanese food products that were found to contain traces of maleic acid, and urged local businesses to recall all the problematic products.
RISK FACTORS: ‘We hope people can cooperate and endure it ... it is possibly the very important last mile,’ Minister of Health and Welfare Chen Shih-chung said Taiwan’s COVID-19 restrictions and mask regulations are to remain the same next month, the Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC) said yesterday. The center reported 42,112 new local COVID-19 cases and 85 deaths, saying that the number of hospitalized COVID-19 patients has dropped to a new low this month. Minister of Health and Welfare Chen Shih-chung (陳時中), who heads the CECC, said that the center is keeping COVID-19 restrictions and mask regulations the same due to the local virus situation, and an increase in the number of imported cases of the new Omicron subvariants BA.4 and BA.5 of SARS-CoV-2, among other risk factors. Easing
TRAVEL CONFERENCE: Representatives from the two countries exchanged views on how to increase tourist numbers, with one identifying individual travel as a trend Taiwan and South Korea aim to increase the number of tourists traveling between the two countries to 3 million, government and tourism industry representatives said at a conference in Hsinchu City yesterday. The annual event was attended by Deputy Minister of Transportation and Communications Chen Yen-po (陳彥伯); Tourism Bureau Director-General Chang Shi-chung (張錫聰); Taiwan Visitors Association chairwoman Yeh Chu-lan (葉菊蘭); South Korean Representative to Taiwan Chung Byung-won; Yoon Ji-sook, an official at the South Korean Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism; and Korea Association of Travel Agents chairman Oh Chang-hee. Global tourism is expected to soon rebound to between 55 and
DAMAGE CONTROL: The KMT in a statement called the Taiwan Strait ‘international waters,’ after Alexander Huang said China had the right to claim it as internal waters Lawmakers and experts yesterday accused the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) envoy to the US Alexander Huang (黃介正) of acting as China’s stooge, after he said that Beijing has the right to claim waters beyond its maritime territory as its exclusive economic zone and that the US has no legal basis to assert that the Taiwan Strait is an “international waterway.” Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Wang Ting-yu (王定宇) said in an online post that most of the world considers the Strait an international waterway, adding that this is important for safeguarding Taiwan. “We have seen US warships transiting through the Taiwan Strait.
The Taichung District Court yesterday sentenced to nine years in prison an unlicensed judo coach who caused the death of a seven-year-old student after slamming him onto the ground more than a dozen times. In its decision against the coach, a man surnamed Ho (何), the court cited his lack of remorse for using excessive force against an inadequately trained child and his failure to reconcile with the parents for his role in their son’s death. Speaking on behalf of the boy’s mother, Taichung City Councilor Jacky Chen (陳清龍) said the family would appeal to a higher court. Prosecutors said that Ho on