The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning.
A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said.
No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing.
Photo courtesy of the Taipei Department of Health
Later yesterday, however, it said the number of customers reporting illness had risen to five and it had ordered the restaurant to close until further notice.
On Friday last week, two New Taipei City residents had lunch together at the establishment before falling ill later that day, with one person showing symptoms at 8pm and the other at 8:10pm, the department said.
The following day, one of the people sought medical treatment at the Sanchong branch of New Taipei City Hospital and was transferred to Mackay Memorial Hospital in Taipei, where they died of kidney failure, it said.
The other person had slight food poisoning and their life was not in danger, it said.
The department opened a probe into the establishment after receiving a report on the incident from New Taipei City’s health authorities, it said.
The restaurant was warned that a second inspection is scheduled for today and failing it would result in a fine of NT$60,000 to NT$200 million (US$1,881 to US$6.27 million) under Article 44 of the Act Governing Food Safety and Sanitation (食品安全衛生管理法), the department said.
Samples collected from swabs of restaurant employees, kitchen utensils and the fecal matter of the two affected customers were being analyzed as part of the investigation, it said.
It would take further action should tests detect common pathogens across the samples to establish a direct link between the restaurant and the death, it said.
Taiwanese can file complaints with the Tourism Administration to report travel agencies if their activities caused termination of a person’s citizenship, Mainland Affairs Council Minister Chiu Chui-cheng (邱垂正) said yesterday, after a podcaster highlighted a case in which a person’s citizenship was canceled for receiving a single-use Chinese passport to enter Russia. The council is aware of incidents in which people who signed up through Chinese travel agencies for tours of Russia were told they could obtain Russian visas and fast-track border clearance, Chiu told reporters on the sidelines of an event in Taipei. However, the travel agencies actually applied
Japanese footwear brand Onitsuka Tiger today issued a public apology and said it has suspended an employee amid allegations that the staff member discriminated against a Vietnamese customer at its Taipei 101 store. Posting on the social media platform Threads yesterday, a user said that an employee at the store said that “those shoes are very expensive” when her friend, who is a migrant worker from Vietnam, asked for assistance. The employee then ignored her until she asked again, to which she replied: "We don't have a size 37." The post had amassed nearly 26,000 likes and 916 comments as of this
New measures aimed at making Taiwan more attractive to foreign professionals came into effect this month, the National Development Council said yesterday. Among the changes, international students at Taiwanese universities would be able to work in Taiwan without a work permit in the two years after they graduate, explainer materials provided by the council said. In addition, foreign nationals who graduated from one of the world’s top 200 universities within the past five years can also apply for a two-year open work permit. Previously, those graduates would have needed to apply for a work permit using point-based criteria or have a Taiwanese company
The Shilin District Prosecutors’ Office yesterday indicted two Taiwanese and issued a wanted notice for Pete Liu (劉作虎), founder of Shenzhen-based smartphone manufacturer OnePlus Technology Co (萬普拉斯科技), for allegedly contravening the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例) by poaching 70 engineers in Taiwan. Liu allegedly traveled to Taiwan at the end of 2014 and met with a Taiwanese man surnamed Lin (林) to discuss establishing a mobile software research and development (R&D) team in Taiwan, prosecutors said. Without approval from the government, Lin, following Liu’s instructions, recruited more than 70 software
RSS