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Taiwan to increase food safety fines
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TAIWAN’S government said yesterday that it plans to increase fines for food safety violations tenfold and offer whistleblowers more rewards to tackle a widening “gutter oil” scandal.
Fines for violations will be raised 10 times to a maximum of NT$200 million (US$6.6 million) if the offense results in death, the government said.
Fines for other food safety offences will also be raised tenfold.
Violators will face a maximum of seven years in prison rather than the current five years for lacing food with banned materials or falsifying ingredients.
The punishment for such an offense that results in death is already life imprisonment after the government passed a tougher food safety law last year.
A maximum NT$2 million reward will be offered to people who give information on food safety breaches, and the reward will be doubled to NT$4 million if an employee blows the whistle on his or her own company.
“Taiwan’s reputation as a gourmet food kingdom has suffered big damage because of this food safety incident and we should all work together to get back on our feet. This will be a primary task of the cabinet this year,” a top government official told reporters yesterday.
The latest scandal involved a company selling hundreds of tons of “gutter oil” to food makers, bakeries and restaurants and has resulted in mass product recalls.
Investigators found that in the six months from February, Chang Guann had purchased 243 tons of tainted oil — collected from cookers, fryers and grease traps — from an unlicensed factory and mixed it with lard oil for sales to its customers islandwide.
A total of 782 tons of such oil had been produced.
Hundreds of tons of mooncakes — traditionally served at this time of year — along with snacks, bread, instant noodles, steamed buns and dumplings have been removed from shelves in Taiwan and Hong Kong since the case surfaced earlier this month.
Some products were also taken off shelves in Shanghai.
More than 1,000 Taiwanese restaurants, bakeries and food plants had used the tainted oil, according to its food and drug administration. Many have apologized to customers for having unknowingly used the tainted oil.
It was the second food safety scandal to hit Taiwan in less than a year. Last December, a Taiwa factory owner was sentenced to 16 years in prison for selling olive oil adulterated with cheap cottonseed oil and a banned coloring agent. Authorities recalled tens of thousands of bottles of cooking oil.
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