The Consumers’ Foundation yesterday accused the government of “fixing” its fights against companies implicated in food scandals, citing the recent reinstatement of Chyuan Shun Food Enterprise Co’s rice dealer license and annulment of a fine given to edible oil manufacturer Chang Chi Foodstuff Factory Co.
In December last year, the Council of Agriculture revoked the license of Chyuan Shun, the manufacturer of the Shanshui Rice (山水米) brand, after it was found to have mixed imported Vietnamese rice with domestically grown rice and sold the product as Taiwanese rice.
“It appears the move was simply part of the council’s ‘match-fixing’ plan, as it deliberately created a procedural flaw in administering the punishment that provided a justifiable cause for Chyuan Shun to file an appeal with the Executive Yuan’s Petitions and Appeals Committee and for the committee to reinstate the firm’s license,” foundation chairman Mark Chang (張智剛) said.
Photo: Hsieh Wen-hua, Taipei Times
The committee decided that the council had failed to give Chyuan Shun a chance to make improvements before withdrawing its license.
The Operational Guidelines Governing the Penalties on Violation of the Food Administration Act (違反糧食管理法案件處分裁量作業要點) stipulate that a license can be pulled only after a company has been fined four times within a year.
“The council imposed three fines on the rice dealer on Sept. 23 last year based on the test results of three rice samples it collected on Aug. 29.
Although the fourth punishment was handed out on Oct. 21, the rice sample it tested had been taken on Aug. 19, which meant Chyuan Shun was not even given a chance to correct its errors,” the committee said at the time.
Withdrawing the license was obviously just “a feint designed to make people think that the government was doing its job” because there was no way the council would not have known that the fourth punishment was problematic, Chang said.
The government’s “just-for-show strategies” were clearly demonstrated by the Ministry of Health and Welfare’s cancelation of a NT$1.85 billion (US$62 million) fine imposed on Chang Chi last year over an adulterated oil scandal.
The ministry made the decision earlier this month on the grounds that the fine violated the double jeopardy principle, given that a district court had sentenced the Chang Chi chairman Kao Cheng-li (高振利) to 16 years in prison and fined him NT$50 million in December last year.
“The foundation agrees with the principle of double jeopardy, but the government ought to make some changes when the administrative law and the criminal law are tying each other’s hands,” Chang said. “Otherwise, criminals will always prevail.”
Chang urged the health ministry, the Ministry of Justice, and the Executive Yuan’s Consumer Protection Department to improve consumer protection efforts by putting administrative punishments before criminal ones in cases where an offense is punishable by both, or by raising the upper limit on criminal fines to an extent that the penalties account for a “deterrent proportion” of a company’s illegal gains.
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