The Control Yuan on Wednesday censured the Council of Agriculture (COA) over a spike in garlic prices from July to September last year.
Control Yuan member Chen Chin-jun (陳景峻) conducted a probe that led to the sanction, it said in a news release.
The wholesale price of garlic was NT$170 per kilogram early last year, but skyrocketed to as much as NT$400 per kilogram, the Control Yuan cited Chen’s report as saying.
The price rise occurred after unusually large shipments of imported garlic were rejected over soil contamination, but the council’s failure on multiple occasions to react to warnings compounded the supply shortages, the report said.
Farmers’ cooperatives in March last year discovered instances of soil contamination, despite customs inspections, it said.
The cooperatives reported the issue to the Bureau of Plant and Animal Inspection, which rejected the shipments after conducting additional tests, it said.
The inconsistencies in the bureau’s first and second batches of tests — some of which were performed by the same inspectors — implied a lack of rigor, the report said.
The bureau failed to share this information with the Agriculture and Food Agency, it said, adding that it was a poor show of inter-departmental coordination within the council.
Prices of garlic rose steadily in the following months, surging about NT$75, or close to 50 percent, in one week in late July last year, it said.
The council received ample warnings in the form of reports from farmers’ groups, a consumer complaint relayed by the New Taipei City Government and media reports, it said.
However, the council’s inactivity continued until Aug. 6 last year, when the Executive Yuan’s price stabilization task force stepped in, it said.
The task force wasted more time mulling the issue until finally taking action on Aug. 19 last year, the Control Yuan said.
Council officials had prepared interventions for when garlic prices became too low, but there was no preparation for the opposite scenario, it said.
This shows that the council did not carry out its duty to protect consumers as a member of the price stabilization task force, it said, adding that the belated policy response has cast doubt on the usefulness of the task force itself.
The Yunlin County Government was also negligent in its duty to supervise retailers and to cooperate with the Ministry of Justice in an investigation, the report said, citing the Agricultural Products Market Transaction Act (農產品市場交易法).
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