The Eye on Taiwan news staff
Prosecutors in Taoyuan, northern Taiwan have searched the plant of an egg wholesaler in yet another food scandal that shocks the public.
CJ-Taian egg supplier, Taiwan’s second-largest egg wholesaler, had allegedly sold expired or even rotten liquid egg products to local businesses in the past six years, according to a press release by the Taoyuan Prosecutors Office on Friday.
At least 59 food companies, unaware of the alleged fraud, were found to have used the gross liquid egg which CJ-Taian had allegedly mixed with normal eggs for baking or food processing, the prosecutors said.
Nine people, including the boss of the wholesaler, have been summoned for questioning, pending further investigation, the prosecutors said.
The egg company declined to say anything, while its boss was not immediately available for comment.
The scandal came to light following an inspection by the health authorities, including the Food and Drug Administration and the Health Department of the Taoyuan City Government, late last month, the prosecutors said.
Guai Guai Company, one of the 59 businesses victimized in the case, said in a press release on Friday that it discovered the problem in late December and reported it to the local health department. The company also put on hold the distribution of a certain kind of egg roll products supposed to have used the liquid egg in question for processing.
Guai Guai said it would sue CJ-Taian for alleged fraud and violation of the food safety law in Taiwan.
In April last year, Taiwanese investigators probed into an egg contamination scandal, of which tens of thousands of eggs from a number of farms were found to have been tainted by toxic chemical carcinogen dioxin.
Taiwan’s image has been seriously dented by a spate of food scandals, ranging from the use of plasticizer to replace palm oil in food and drinks as clouding agent and adulteration of cooking oil with recycled waste oil and animal feed oil, in the past decade.
