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EDITORIAL: Food safety pledges lack bite
It is difficult to see how a thinking person could not be angry. Since last year’s mislabeled cooking oils scandal, Ting Hsin International (頂新集團) has been behind three food scares and consumers are uneasy about what surprises the company has left to spring.
Minister of Health and Welfare Chiu Wen-ta (邱文達) resigned on Friday last week to take responsibility for the recent scandals, but the government has found neither a suitable candidate to replace him, nor an effective solution to the problem. Its assurances over food safety are just empty words.
During last month’s tainted oil scandal, Democratic Progressive Party legislators Lin Shu-fen (林淑芬) and Chen Chi-mai (陳其邁) raised concerns over Ting Hsin during a Q&A session with Premier Jiang Yi-huah (江宜樺), saying that a member of the public had reported suspicions that the company’s oils for human consumption had been contaminated with animal feed oil, but Jiang said there were no problems. This was only two weeks ago.
Also, during his resignation press conference, Chiu said all lard products that failed to pass muster had been removed from shelves. His assurances will haunt him, since prosecutors have subsequently discovered animal feed oil has been used in cooking oil products under the Cheng I Food (正義股份) brand, a subsidiary of Ting Hsin.
Even more risible, prosecutors issued a press release on Wednesday morning confirming problems with the Cheng I cooking oils, including Wei Lih Fragrance Oil (維力清香油), that were unknown to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). That evening, the FDA was still unable to confirm which upstream and downstream manufacturers were affected and was therefore unable to identify the contaminated batches. Yesterday morning, people read that a full 68 items have subsequently been removed from shelves.
People often joke that the government finds out about the latest developments only when it reads about them in the news, but the FDA really did not know about this latest example of questionable foods until it read about it in the press release issued by prosecutors in the south. Thank heavens Taiwanese have this lot looking out for us.
How is the public to trust the government when — after scandal upon scandal and with the problem endemic across many departments — the government sets up a Cabinet-level food safety committee to serve as an interdepartmental communication framework that has met only twice in a year? What good is that?
When the nation was anxious about revelations of tainted oils from Chang Guann Co (強冠企業) early last month, the government dithered and the Environmental Protection Administration did not seem to care. Now, people find out that the FDA is not in control, that prosecutors have to take the initiative and that the government’s right hand has no idea what the left hand is up to. A well-oiled machine it is not.
With all of these food scandals breaking, legislators are calling for more powers for the food safety committee, including stricter regulation and penalties, and Jiang has also announced eight measures. So how was it that the nation’s largest manufacturer of cooking oil products continued to import inferior lard to sell domestically, raking in huge profits as a result? This is an oversight that should have been paid attention to, was incumbent upon the authorities to pay attention to, and yet was ignored. It is the utterly unforgivable result of unscrupulous management and governmental incompetence.
Ting Hsin’s name is now mud and the public’s trust in the government collapsed long ago. The tainted oil scandal has caused the minister to resign and the way that Jiang batted aside concerns about Ting Hsin in the legislature — guaranteeing that all was under control — shows that problems remain and that he has no idea of what to do about them. Will the premier apologize to the nation and take responsibility?
source: Taipei Times
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