Ready-to-use hot-pot soup bases might not be what they seem, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) said yesterday.
Some do not contain the animal ingredients listed on the package labels or include animal-based products when they are marketed as vegan food, the agency said.
The agency had academic institutions send out “secret shoppers” last year to purchase hot-pot-soup base products nationwide.
Of the 54 products purchased, 32, or nearly 60 percent, did not comply with product standards and/or labeling requirements, the agency said.
“Of the deficient products, 18 failed to provide a complete list of ingredients and 16 did not contain the ingredients suggested in their products’ names, such as lamb hot pot that DNA tests showed held no trace of lamb and chicken soup that contained no traces of chicken,” Food Safety Division Director Pan Chih-kuan (潘志寬) said.
Five of the products marketed themselves as vegetarian, but were laced with various kinds of animal ingredients, which was reprehensible, Pan said.
“That may have caused some consumers who follow a vegetarian diet for religious reasons to consume animal extracts without knowing it,” Pan said.
As of yesterday, the manufacturers of 28 of 32 faulty products had made improvements, Pan said.
Consumers planning to eat hot pot on Lunar New Year’s eve should select products that are clearly labeled or make the broth themselves, Pan said.
Meanwhile, Taipei City Department of Health officials and the city’s consumer ombudsmen are to meet today with representatives of hot pot restaurants that have used duck-blood pudding allegedly adulterated with animal-feed-grade poultry blood to discuss a refund mechanism.
As of yesterday, a total of 16 hot pot restaurants in the capital were found to have purchased the potentially tainted duck-blood pudding from manufacturer Shuang Peng Food (雙鵬), including several household-names such as Tripod King spicy hot pot (鼎王麻辣鍋), Ning Chi chilly hot spot (寧記麻辣火鍋), Wulao hot pot (無老鍋), Mala hot pot (馬辣鴛鴦火鍋) and Chien Yen Shabu Shabu (千葉火鍋).
“Last year, the 30 hotels and restaurants in the city that had purchased Shu-seng’s (樹森開發) reconstituted beef mixed with beef tallow powder that had been tainted with inferior oil all agreed to offer a full refund after meeting with bureau staffers,” said Wang Ming-li (王明理), who works in the department’s Division of Drugs and Food.
Based on experience, Wang said the department is optimistic that the 16 restaurants involved in the adulterated duck-blood pudding probe would provide a similar refund scheme to compensate consumers.
Shuang Peng, which provides nearly 70 percent of the country’s duck-blood pudding, allegedly began selling adulterated duck-blood pudding in November 2012.
Investigators yesterday released a list of more than 400 department stores, supermarkets, restaurants and food vendors that purchased Shuang Peng products.
Health departments around the nation are still trying to determine how many businesses may have bought the allegedly tainted duck-blood pudding.
As of 2pm on Saturday, they had confiscated a total of 10,033kg of potentially problematic products.
Food and Drug Administration Director-General Chiang Yu-mei (姜郁美) earlier said that most of the tainted products have probably been eaten or thrown out, as blood pudding has a shelf-life of just two to three days.
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