Dingxin acquitted in first trial: can urine be refined into a beverage? Experts call for closing the loopholes quickly
Last year it emerged that Ting Hsin was suspected of mixing feed oil into cooking oil and selling it, and the Changhua District Court yesterday handed down a first-instance not-guilty verdict, causing an uproar; the judge held that prosecutors could not prove Ting Hsin's oil products came from illegal sources, and that using only the acid value and total polar compounds test reports from the end product could not prove it was feed oil.
Lipid experts believe that while the judge's verdict is indeed questionable, the Food and Drug Administration's insufficient oil testing standards are also a major reason for Ting Hsin's acquittal; the law should be amended as soon as possible to test whether oil products contain human carcinogens such as benzo[a]pyrene, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons and so on; Changhua County Health Bureau Director Yen-Po Yeh, however, believes the lawsuit should not focus only on test items, and that even if feed oil can be refined for edible use, its source must still be recognized in advance by the FDA as legal, "otherwise, after refining, could urine be used as a beverage?" Once this precedent is set, it will have a huge impact on food safety management.
Judge holds that acid value and total polar compounds are unrelated to oil product safety
The most important point of contention in this case is how to prove that the source of Ting Hsin's cooking oil was illegal. Prosecutors presented evidence from two aspects: one was the end-product test report, including the acid value, total polar compounds, and aflatoxin of Ting Hsin's oils and fats, and the other was that the source of Ting Hsin's raw oil was the Vietnamese company "Dai Hanh Phuc", which only ever made feed oil.
However, when the Changhua District Prosecutors Office measured Ting Hsin's acid value and total polar compounds, it used "rapid screening" testing, not the FDA-certified formal sampling method "column chromatography", so even if total polar compounds exceeded FDA standards, it could not be used as court evidence.
Later, the panel of judges once again used "column chromatography" to sample Ting Hsin's oil tanks, and total polar compounds, acid value, aflatoxin and so on were all within limits; only lead exceeded the limit, ruling out the possibility of recycled oil.
In addition, whether it was expert witness Chu Yen-hua, director of the Food Industry Research and Development Institute, or Hsueh Fu-chin, deputy director of the FDA's Food Division, both stated that acid value only tests the "quality" of an oil product, determining whether it is fresh or not, and is unrelated to safety.
Regarding the contention that "Dai Hanh Phuc" company only produced feed oil, because the FDA currently only sets CNS standards for edible and feed use for "finished oil" and has no regulations for "raw oil", the judge held that if crude oil is not refined, it can be used as feed oil, and if it undergoes refining steps such as decolorization and deacidification and meets the CNS standards for edible oils and fats, it can be sold as cooking oil. Therefore, pointing out that "Dai Hanh Phuc" company only had feed oil also cannot prove that the source of Ting Hsin's cooking oil products was illegal.
Scholars call for: new test items
Whether from the judge's view or existing regulations, it is very difficult to use end-product test reports to prove that the source of oil products is illegal. To solve this dilemma there are two approaches: one is to amend the finished oil standards to include more tested substances, and the other is to simply abandon the use of end-product testing as proof.
On this point, industry figures and Chen Chun-cheng, an adjunct lecturer at the Extension Education Division of Chinese Culture University, both believe that substances that can distinguish feed oil, recycled oil and cooking oil should be identified and written into the law as standards; for example, lead should never be detected in cooking oil in the first place.
Chen Chun-cheng gave examples: feed oil and recycled oil are often repeatedly heated and fried, easily producing carcinogens such as benzo[a]pyrene, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, dioxins, polychlorinated biphenyls, and 3-monochloropropane-1,2-diol, among others; these can be used to determine the source or safety hazard, and physicians are also better able to diagnose whether human health is affected by targeting the above substances. "Acid value is indirect evidence; a high acid value indicates oil degradation, and continued use may produce carcinogens, so we need to see exactly what carcinogens are produced and find direct evidence, otherwise indirect evidence is very difficult to sustain in court."
Changhua Health Bureau Director: management should start at the source
However, Yen-Po Yeh, director of the Changhua County Health Bureau, believes we cannot get trapped in the myth of end-product testing; food hygiene management emphasizes gatekeeping at the source, and it is very difficult to use test items to work backward and determine whether raw materials are compliant.
He said FDA regulations long ago stipulated that non-food raw materials cannot be made into food, and all food raw materials follow the "prior recognition" principle; that is, only after the FDA recognizes a raw material as usable for food can it be made into food. "Even if feed oil can be refined into cooking oil, it must first be recognized and permitted by the FDA," and the Act Governing Food Safety and Sanitation stipulates that food must label its raw materials; even if Ting Hsin legally refined feed oil into cooking oil, the oil product must still be labeled: this oil comes from refined feed oil.
In other words, as long as "Dai Hanh Phuc" company is recognized as unable to supply cooking oil, whether the pigs came from diseased dead pigs, and whether the test reports met the CNS standards for cooking oil, are not the focus of contention, because it was illegal from the very start.
The judge's logic diverges from practical food safety management. Yen-Po Yeh believes that at present both sides are focusing too much on test reports; if the judge's logic is followed, "after refining, urine can also be made into a beverage", which will have a huge impact on future food safety management.
FDA: will emphasize that the raw material source is illegal
Which approach can actually effectively manage food? Chih-Kuan Pan, director of the FDA's Food Division, believes it is impossible to rely solely on end-product testing of substances to distinguish whether the source of oil is feed, recycled or cooking oil; "once a substance standard is set, manufacturers will find a way to lower the value of that substance."
Feed oil may be contaminated with feces, and factories that do not meet HACCP standards may have been contaminated with substance ABC during the process, but testing may only look at substance DEF; relying on testing alone, there is no way to know exactly which harmful substances the oil contains, so what matters is gatekeeping at the source.
Pan said that from the perspective of food safety management, as long as the raw material is non-compliant, no amount of refining will make it compliant; Vietnamese authorities long ago produced certificates showing that the source of Ting Hsin's oil was a feed plant, so the raw material was illegal from the very beginning, and future litigation will especially emphasize this point.
Toxicology expert Wu Kun-yu, a professor at National Taiwan University's College of Public Health and first on the Democratic Progressive Party's at-large legislative candidate list, stressed that this case highlights Taiwan's lack of a dedicated risk management assessment body, and that it is unknown which substances in degraded oils and fats are harmful to human health; in the future Taiwan will follow the example of the EU's EFSA and establish a dedicated risk assessment agency.