Warning issued for bad Taiwan cooking oil

The Chinese mainland's top quality watchdog put out a warning on Saturday about food products from Taiwan that contained recycled cooking oil.

The authority has closely followed the issue and contacted authorities in Taiwan to get more information about exported oil products and a list of companies in the mainland that could be affected, the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine said in a statement on Saturday.

On Thursday, police in Taiwan arrested six people involved in selling hundreds of tons of recycled cooking oil made from kitchen waste and grease from leather processing plants in Kaohsiung and neighboring Pingtung, Xinhua News Agency reported.

Chang Guann Co, an established supplier of cooking oil in Taiwan, purchased the recycled oil to produce 782 tons of lard and sold the products to at least 235 food companies and restaurants, the statement said.

Seventy-seven companies have been confirmed to have used the oil, it said.

After a preliminary inspection, authorities on the mainland have not found any imports of lard products.

The administration has ordered local mainland authorities to suspend applications for inspection filed by the companies affected and to examine their export records, it said, adding that any products involved in the case will be taken off supermarket shelves.

Singapore's Lianhe Zaobao newspaper said on its micro blog on Sunday that the incident has also affected Hong Kong and Macao, where it has been confirmed that nearly 100 enterprises used the oil.

The information has stirred public attention.

A Beijing advertising company employee whose online name is Xilu Chaoshengzhe said that the case will force food security supervisors in Taiwan and on the mainland to increase their supervision.

"Cooking oil has become a common food security issue, "and that worries me," he wrote on his micro blog on Sunday.

Another micro-blogger named Mitang Bingbing said she was shocked by the news. "It's unbelievable that a cooking oil scandal also happened in Taiwan. Maybe it's still safe to eat homemade food," she added.

Yi Shenghua, a criminal lawyer in Beijing who has experience with food security cases, said unsafe foods are a problem worldwide, not just on the mainland.

"Some businesspeople want to increase their profits regardless of where the extra profit comes from," Yi said. "What's important is how local governments supervise and prevent this problem."

He said the mainland authority can impose administrative punishments, including fines, on Taiwan companies if it finds their food involved the substandard oil scandal.

"In addition, if the amount of the cooking oil those companies used is large enough, the mainland can hand down criminal penalties under Chinese Criminal Law and cross-Straits legal contracts," he added.