Wagyu Emperor, a grilled meat restaurant in Taichung’s Situn District (西屯), is to be fined at least NT$1.44 million (US$44,321) and ordered to suspend business after multiple expired food products were found in its kitchen, the city government said yesterday.
The Taichung City Health Bureau said it discovered the food safety breaches during a search on Sunday, after receiving a tip-off from one of the restaurant’s former employees.
Inspectors found a range of expired products, including four cans of doubanjiang (chili bean sauce), two containers of kombu dashi broth, three jars of concentrated beverage syrups, 11 boxes of miso, 24 boxes of Morioka reimen noodles, and 18 boxes of several cuts of beef, the bureau said.
Photo: CNA
After the search, the restaurant issued a statement saying that the expired food items were being saved for “employee training purposes” and had not been served to customers.
At the time, the health bureau said that it was still investigating the matter, but viewed the restaurant’s claims “with a high level of suspicion.”
Taichung Health Bureau Director Tseng Tzu-chan (曾梓展) yesterday said his agency planned later that day to issue fines for the 12 types of expired food products that were found during the inspection.
Restaurants are typically fined NT$60,000 for each expired food product, or NT$120,000 if the expired products were used knowingly, meaning that in this case, the fine would be “at least NT$1.44 million,” he said.
Wagyu Emperor has also been ordered to suspend business, because it has failed to provide records on product deliveries, inventory and sales, Tseng said, adding that if it was unable to do so by Wednesday, it would face an additional fine of NT$30,000 to NT$3 million.
The former employee who blew the whistle on the restaurant is entitled to a reward of 50 percent of the fine, or NT$720,000, Tseng said.
Wagyu Emperor opened in September last year and touted its use of premium wagyu beef imported directly from Japan.
A two-person set menu at the restaurant costs NT$3,900.
Left-Handed Girl (左撇子女孩), a film by Taiwanese director Tsou Shih-ching (鄒時擎) and cowritten by Oscar-winning director Sean Baker, won the Gan Foundation Award for Distribution at the Cannes Critics’ Week on Wednesday. The award, which includes a 20,000 euro (US$22,656) prize, is intended to support the French release of a first or second feature film by a new director. According to Critics’ Week, the prize would go to the film’s French distributor, Le Pacte. "A melodrama full of twists and turns, Left-Handed Girl retraces the daily life of a single mother and her two daughters in Taipei, combining the irresistible charm of
A Philippine official has denied allegations of mistreatment of crew members during Philippine authorities’ boarding of a Taiwanese fishing vessel on Monday. Philippine Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources (BFAR) spokesman Nazario Briguera on Friday said that BFAR law enforcement officers “observed the proper boarding protocols” when they boarded the Taiwanese vessel Sheng Yu Feng (昇漁豐號) and towed it to Basco Port in the Philippines. Briguera’s comments came a day after the Taiwanese captain of the Sheng Yu Feng, Chen Tsung-tun (陳宗頓), held a news conference in Pingtung County and accused the Philippine authorities of mistreatment during the boarding of
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is pushing for residents of Kinmen and Lienchiang counties to acquire Chinese ID cards in a bid to “blur national identities,” a source said. The efforts are part of China’s promotion of a “Kinmen-Xiamen twin-city living sphere, including a cross-strait integration pilot zone in China’s Fujian Province,” the source said. “The CCP is already treating residents of these outlying islands as Chinese citizens. It has also intensified its ‘united front’ efforts and infiltration of those islands,” the source said. “There is increasing evidence of espionage in Kinmen, particularly of Taiwanese military personnel being recruited by the
88.2 PERCENT INCREASE: The variants driving the current outbreak are not causing more severe symptoms, but are ‘more contagious’ than previous variants, an expert said Number of COVID-19 cases in the nation is surging, with the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) describing the ongoing wave of infections as “rapid and intense,” and projecting that the outbreak would continue through the end of July. A total of 19,097 outpatient and emergency visits related to COVID-19 were reported from May 11 to Saturday last week, an 88.2 percent increase from the previous week’s 10,149 visits, CDC data showed. The nearly 90 percent surge in case numbers also marks the sixth consecutive weekly increase, although the total remains below the 23,778 recorded during the same period last year,
RSS