Statement from the Homemakers United Foundation

2014.09.06

Tainted swill oil for Mid-Autumn Festival: the derelict government has run a red light!

The recently and continuously expanding tainted swill oil scandal has once again plunged the public into a panic over food safety. Now it is not just a single chemical substance added to cooking oil; rather, the cooking oil contains all kinds of fats and oils unfit for human consumption: such as leather oil, lard simply rendered from the toxic internal organs and offcuts of dead pigs, or discarded cooking oil that has been treated with oil-filtering agents and repeatedly deep-fried, or even worse, the moldy, rancid floating oil skimmed from swill buckets! Just when every citizen and every person who eats out is worrying about whether the food or food products before them can safely be put in their mouths, our government has opened its eyes wide and loudly declared the current food safety situation a "green light" - a lie! In the many food safety crises of recent years, the government has not only failed to learn its lesson and actively improve, but has also shown no remorse at all for its long-standing dereliction and abdication, allowing businesses to self-regulate and fail. Here, the Homemakers United Foundation, standing on the front line of defending consumers' health rights and environmental protection, wants to roar at this derelict, abdicating government!

The Environmental Protection Administration's "light-touch" management effectively indulges lawbreaking businesses and colludes with them

After last year's Dadong oil incident, the Homemakers United Foundation tracked our government's control measures for waste cooking oil. In the past, waste cooking oil was not included in the list of waste that must be recycled, and it was only after the Ministry of Economic Affairs opened up recycling of waste cooking oil by various recyclers in 2002 that the Environmental Protection Administration formally listed waste cooking oil in 2007 as an item that certain enterprises must report in their waste disposal plans. However, the market price of waste cooking oil is quite high, and moreover this was not a policy publicly announced by the Environmental Protection Administration, so the agency adopted only "light-touch" management and did not actively track where recycled waste cooking oil went. Although the Environmental Protection Administration set up an online waste management system in 2007, requiring recyclers in each county and city to report how recycled waste cooking oil would be handled and in what quantities, this was only a short-term plan! Once the plan ended, the staff dispersed - so how many local governments are still reporting? In addition, because the reuse companies that handle the final treatment of waste cooking oil may operate outside the jurisdiction of the original local environmental protection bureau, it is not easy to track where it flows. As a result, the central government kicked the ball to the local governments, and the local governments kicked it right back! Now, we lack an adequate statistical basis for the quantities of waste oil recycled, and the Environmental Protection Administration and local environmental protection bureaus inspect haulers, recyclers and reuse companies at extremely low frequency. Is this "light-touch" management truly meant to protect the health of the people? Or is it meant to indulge lawbreaking businesses and collude with them?

The Ministry of Health and Welfare's so-called three-layer gatekeeping has failed completely!

After every food safety crisis, the Ministry of Health and Welfare often keeps beating its chest and assuring everyone that "business self-management", "third-party impartial certification" and "government oversight" - three layers of protection - are enough to safeguard the food safety of all citizens. But this incident just goes to show that all three layers of gatekeeping have failed completely!

1. If businesses had done proper self-management, why did 235 companies get into trouble? Is the government's claimed "business self-management" just upstream manufacturers making purchases based on paperwork, price, personal connections and certification labels?

2. So-called third-party impartial certification systems like GMP and ISO are all backed behind the scenes by big food industry bosses or corporate consultants. In the food safety crises of recent years, these certified foods and ingredients have repeatedly failed. The label system faces bankruptcy - will anyone dare trust these "impartial body certifications" in the future?

3. Just when the 17 frontline grassroots inspectors and testing staff of the Food and Drug Administration were working desperately as the last line of defense for the food safety of all citizens, our senior government officials instead took the side of food industry manufacturers and publicly rated this food safety storm a "green light"! That is, "tainted swill oil" with potential risks to human health was merely buckets of mislabeled, harmless "inferior lard"! With this arrogant, selfish attitude and deceitful rhetoric, the Ministry of Health and Welfare fools the public and plays with frontline workers who must constantly charge into the fire. Are such government officials truly trying to safeguard food safety for the people?

Food safety shows a red light every day, and the government abdicates every year

The outbreak of many major food safety problems in recent years forced the Executive Yuan to establish a food safety task force to coordinate and handle increasingly complex food safety challenges across ministries. But government departments remain indifferent to the panic that directly affects people's lives, starting things without finishing them, and only want to use rhetoric to calm the storm! For example, the Ministry of Economic Affairs waited until public opinion created pressure before saying it would revoke the GMP certification qualifications of manufacturers such as Wei Chuan; and in the early days of the outbreak, the Ministry of Health and Welfare claimed to be proactive, but later, fearing it would affect the livelihoods of the food industry, it arbitrarily defined a health hazard as a "safe green light" before toxicology test results had even come out. The Environmental Protection Administration, responsible for waste oil recycling and management, was even worse - it has remained completely silent throughout the incident! Faced with daily food safety crises, such a government abdicates and remains passive all day long, letting businesses and the market "self-manage", and whenever the Food Safety and Sanitation Management Act is amended, it always finds every way to shield manufacturers, so that when problems arise it has no idea whether to advance or retreat. It is truly unfit, incompetent and derelict, leaving the people utterly unable to tolerate or trust it.

To this end, we call for:

1. Health is a basic human right. We ask the competent authority, the Ministry of Health and Welfare, to clearly stand on the side of public food safety and health, make good use of all the tools in the newly revised Food Safety Act, stop finding excuses for manufacturers, and fulfill its role as a fair and strict arbiter and gatekeeper. In addition, during the window period before the announced regulations under the Food Safety Act concerning regular testing of raw materials and semi-finished products and traceability systems take effect, inspections and supervision must be strictly strengthened.

2. As consumers, in addition to taking various self-help and self-protection actions right now, please stand together with the Homemakers United Foundation and become green living actors - eat real food, cook often, and care about food and our environment, so that we can reclaim our food autonomy for ourselves and our next generation. We also invite all partners who wish to respond to society through practical action to become our members and volunteers, so that more green, independent women can unite with tireless, ethics-rebuilding stewardship power to jointly oversee this malfunctioning government and these unscrupulous enterprises.

Press contact: Homemakers United Foundation, Secretary-General Lai Hsiao-fen 0937-800-597