The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has pledged to pull all products manufactured with lard oil contaminated with animal feed oil off the shelves nationwide before Monday as more big-name food makers were drawn into the oil scandal yesterday.
As of press time last night, a total of 71 domestic and seven companies from Hong Kong and Macau had been found to have purchased the 24 brands of edible lard products manufactured by Greater Kaohsiung-based oil maker Chang Guann Co.
The lard oil was allegedly mixed with the 87.72 tonnes of animal feed oil Chang Guann had imported from Hong Kong this year, which was originally listed as for human consumption.
Photo: CNA
The 71 local firms include I Lan Foods Industrial Co, one of the subsidiaries of Want Want Group that manufactures rice crackers, instant noodle maker Vedan Co, snack food producer Kuai Kuai Co, Futong Food Enterprise and Haw-Di-I Foods Co.
Japanese fast-food chain MOS Burger was also drawn into the oil scandal yesterday after the supplier for its gravy and curry sauce — Magic-Food Mos Food Industry Corp — has also been implicated.
Chang Guann has been in hot water after it was found to have used 242 tonnes of recycled waste oil collected from restaurant fryers that were provided by an unlicensed factory in Pingtung County in the production of its “fragrant lard oil” affecting a total of 1,256 companies and 250 kinds of foodstuffs.
Photo: Liu Hsin-de, Taipei Times
The oil scandal further escalated on Thursday after Hong Kong’s Centre for Food Safety confirmed that the 87.72 tonnes of lard oil Chang Guann Co procured from Hong Kong-based Globalway Corp Ltd this year were actually meant for animal use only.
“As of 7pm yesterday, we have identified 73 food products that have been produced with the animal feed oil, which are expected to be removed from the shelves within three days,” FDA Deputy Director-General Chiang Yu-mei (姜郁美) told a news conference in Taipei.
The snowballing oil scare also prompted renowned chef Cheng Yen-chi (鄭衍基), better known as A-chi-shih (阿基師), to kneel down and apologize to the public in Shanghai, China, yesterday, after a food product he endorsed — Bull Head’s Shallot Sauce that was manufactured by Haw-Di-I Foods — was found to be contaminated with the animal feed oil.
The gesture was Cheng’s attempt to fulfill his previous promise that he would go down on his knees should any of the food products he had endorsed were implicated in the oil scare.
“I am sorry I was wrong. But I will not shed a tear because it is the responsible thing to do... In the face of such a misfortune, A-chi-shih has no complaint, nor will I evade my responsibility,” Cheng said.
Cheng’s apology triggered a wave of online criticism of the government, with many saying it should be the government and the unscrupulous companies that knowingly used inferior quality oil that should be on their knees.
In an apparent attempt to assuage growing pressure for him to step down to take responsibility for the oil scare, Minister of Health and Welfare Chiu Wen-ta (邱文達) was quoted by the Chinese-language Apple Daily as saying in an interview published yesterday that the ministry is mulling raising the maximum prison term for violators of food safety laws to 15 from the current five years.
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