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.
Taiwanese paleontologists have discovered fossil evidence that pythons up to 4m long inhabited Taiwan during the Pleistocene epoch, reporting their findings in the international scientific journal Historical Biology. National Taiwan University (NTU) Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology associate professor Tsai Cheng-hsiu (蔡政修) led the team that discovered the largest snake fossil ever found in Taiwan. The single trunk vertebra was discovered in Tainan at the Chiting Formation, dated to between 400,000 and 800,000 years ago in the Middle Pleistocene, the paper said. The area also produced Taiwan’s first avian fossil, as well as crocodile, mammoth, saber-toothed cat and rhinoceros fossils, it said. Discoveries
WATCH FOR HITCHHIKERS: The CDC warned those returning home from Japan to be alert for any contagious diseases that might have come back with them People who have returned from Japan following the World Baseball Classic (WBC) games during the weekend are recommended to watch for symptoms of infectious gastroenteritis, flu and measles for two weeks, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said. Flu viruses remain the most common respiratory pathogen in Taiwan in the past four weeks and the influenza B virus accounted for 55.7 percent of the tested cases, exceeding the percentage of influenza A (H3N2) infections and becoming the local dominant strain, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said at a news conference on Tuesday. There were 82,187 hospital visits for
Alumni from Japan’s Kyoto Tachibana Senior High School marching band, widely known as the “Orange Devils,” staged a flash mob performance at the Grand Hotel in Taipei yesterday to thank Taiwan for its support after the Great East Japan Earthquake. The show, performed on the earthquake’s 15th anniversary, drew more than 100 spectators, some of whom arrived two hours before the show to secure a good viewing spot. The 26-member group played selections from “High School Musical,” “Beauty and the Beast,” and their signature piece “Sing Sing Sing” and shouted “I love
INCREASED CAPACITY: The flights on Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays would leave Singapore in the morning and Taipei in the afternoon Singapore Airlines is adding four supplementary flights to Taipei per week until May to meet increased tourist and business travel demand, the carrier said on Friday. The addition would raise the number of weekly flights it operates to Taipei to 18, Singapore Airlines Taiwan general manager Timothy Ouyang (歐陽漢源) said. The airline has recorded a steady rise in tourist and business travel to and from Taipei, and aims to provide more flexible travel arrangements for passengers, said Ouyang, who assumed the post in July last year. From now until Saturday next week, four additional flights would depart from Singapore on Monday, Wednesday, Friday
RSS