A toxin suspected to be the source of a lethal food poisoning outbreak in a Taipei restaurant has been detected in the feces of a chef from the Malaysian restaurant chain Polam Kopitiam’s branch in Taipei’s Xinyi District (信義), Deputy Minister of Health and Welfare Victor Wang (王必勝) said on Saturday.
The toxin — bongkrek acid — was found in samples collected from the chef’s feces on March 27, Wang wrote on Facebook.
Samples collected from that chef’s hands on March 24 also tested positive for bongkrek acid, which can be fatal to humans even in minute quantities, even if as little as 1mg was consumed.
Photo: Kan Meng-lin, Taipei Times
The toxin was found in most of the people who experienced food poisoning at the branch.
As of 5:30pm on Saturday, out of the 34 people who ate at the Xinyi restaurant between March 18 and March 24 have reported falling ill, two have died and seven people remain hospitalized, with four of them in a critical condition in intensive care units.
The remaining 25 are recuperating at home, the Ministry of Health and Welfare (MOHW) said.
Wang said that the chef, whose health condition is normal, underwent blood and urine tests for bongkrek acid on Friday and the results were negative.
He said that the chef might not have directly eaten the food contaminated with the toxin, but ingested a trace amount of it.
Wang said that the toxin could have originated from contamination of the chef’s hands, likely acquired through contact with contaminated food during the cooking process.
The positive fecal test might be caused by contamination during the fecal sampling performed by the chef, he added.
Wang also said that 14 environmental samples collected from surfaces at the chef’s homecame back negative results for Burkholderia gladioli, a bacterium known to produce bongkrek acid.
To “look for the bacterium that is the key to the incident,” Wang said, adding that the MOHW inspectors visited two other locations where the chef had stayed on Friday last week.
They collected 12 and 15 environmental samples respectively to test for Burkholderia gladioli, he said, without specifying when the results would be available.
Wang said that the food poisoning outbreak was confined to the Xinyi branch and occurred between March 19 and March 24, with flat rice noodles remaining the primary suspect.
MOHW data showed that among the 34 affected people, 32 tested positive for bongkrek acid, while one individual who consumed noodles on March 18, but not flat rice noodles like the rest of the group, between March 19 and March 24, tested negative for the toxin. The remaining person is still being tested.
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