A spate of cooking oil safety scares over the past year has tarnished Taiwan’s international image and hampered the nation’s ability to forge free-trade deals with other countries, National Security Bureau (NSB) Director-General Lee Hsiang-chou (李翔宙) said yesterday.
Lee made the remarks in response to queries from lawmakers during a meeting of the legislature’s Foreign Affairs and National Defense Committee.
Asked about the impact of the food safety problems, Lee said they have put people’s health at risk, hurt the image of the domestic food market and undermined the nation’s efforts to sign free-trade pacts and join regional trade efforts such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations.
Photo: Yeh Kuan-yu, Taipei Times
The scares would also affect processed food exports, as Japan and China have blocked oil shipments from Taiwan in the wake of the latest cooking oil scandal, he said.
The most recent incident, exposed last week, involved cooking oil producers Ting Hsin Oil and Fat Industrial Co (頂新製油實業) and Cheng I Food Co (正義股份) — both subsidiaries of the Ting Hsin International Group (頂新集團) — mixing oils meant for animal feed into their lard-based oil products.
In previous scares, dating to November last year, companies were found to have adulterated pure oils with cheaper oils and used oils from recycled kitchen waste and industrial grease not fit for human consumption in the production of cooking oils.
Lee acknowledged that the edible oil problems needed to be exposed and called for cross-department cooperation to resolve the issue as soon as possible.
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