Five individuals connected to Polam Kopitiam, including the owner and chefs of the Taipei restaurant, were indicted yesterday for negligent homicide in connection with a food poisoning case that resulted in six deaths last year, the Taipei District Prosecutors Office said.
The fatal food poisoning case, which occurred in late March last year, resulted in 33 reported illnesses -- including six individuals who later died -- after dining at the Xinyi branch of the Malaysian restaurant chain Polam Kopitiam in Taipei, deputy chief prosecutor Kao I-shu (高一書) told a news conference.
Polam Kopitiam owner, surnamed Li (黎), manager of the Xinyi branch, surnamed Wang (王), two chefs, surnamed Chou (周) and Ho (胡), and an intern at the restaurant, were all indicted for negligent homicide, negligent injury, and violation of the Act Governing Food Safety and Sanitation (食品安全衛生管理法), Kao said.
Photo: Kan Meng-lin, Taipei Times
Regarding the defendants’ offenses, Kao stated they all understood that flat rice noodles -- a key ingredient in the dishes consumed by all the victims in the case -- should be stored at low temperatures once the package has been opened.
However, Ho, Chou, and the intern “carelessly placed” opened packages of flat rice noodles in a storage basket on the lower shelf of a kitchen table, near the floor and drainage system, at room temperature from an unspecified date in March until March 24, Kao said.
The three individuals continued to serve customers the improperly stored noodles, he added.
Ho failed to follow basic food safety practices, such as preventing cross-contamination, by repeatedly using the same plastic bag as a glove to handle flat rice noodles opened at different times and by mixing noodles from different packages, Kao said.
As for the reason why bongkrekic acid -- a rare and deadly toxin detected in all victims of the food poisoning incident -- was produced, Kao explained that it was due to the “favorable environment” that allowed the bacterium Burkholderia gladioli to grow and generate the toxin.
According to Kao, the Far Eastern Xinyi A13 Department Store, where the restaurant was located, turned off its air conditioning system after business hours, and Ho, Chou and the intern routinely hosed down the kitchen floors at the end of their night shifts, allowing wastewater to flow into the drainage system near the storage basket.
Such hot and humid conditions, combined with Ho, Chou, and the intern’s mishandling of flat rice noodles, resulted in food items containing flat rice noodles sold between March 19 and 24 being contaminated with bongkrekic acid, he added.
Kao said the prosecutors office is asking the court to impose a fixed-term imprisonment of no less than four years and two months for Ho’s actions and no less than four years for Li’s actions.
Li, the owner of Polam Kopitiam, failed to establish and enforce a food safety management system at the restaurant, attempted to shift blame after the incident and showed no remorse, Kao explained.
As for Wang and the intern, Kao said that the office recommended “an appropriate sentence,” while suggesting “a heavier penalty” for Chou, without specifying the suggested sentence for the three.
According to Article 276 of the Criminal Code of the Republic of China (Taiwan’s official name), “a person who negligently causes the death of another shall be sentenced to imprisonment for not more than five years, short-term imprisonment, or a fine of no more than NT$500,000 (US$ 15,273).”
In response to media queries about the exact cause of the food poisoning incident, specifically the origin of the toxin, the Prosecutors Office said that evidence from autopsy reports and surveillance footage from the kitchen, is “sufficient to determine” that the food responsible for the incident was the flat rice noodles.
Those flat rice noodles “were contaminated with bongkrekic acid at the Polam Kopitiam A13 branch,” the prosecutors office said, without further addressing or offering proof as to the origin of the bacterium Burkholderia gladioli.
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