Taiwan 'Gutter Oil" is Latest Food Scandal In China

Mmmm...pasties made with gutter oil.

A new food safety scandal has emerged in Taiwan and China involving 'gutter oil' ..or recycled oil from questionable sources.  During a raid of an oil processor, it was discovered that recycled oil was sold to food companies in Hong Kong and China.  The problem is that the oil came from a number of questionable sources and therefore has the potential to contain harmful substances.

This oil was then reportedly used as an ingredient in food products including pineapple cakes.

NY Times
 http://sinosphere.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/09/08/taiwan-reels-from-gutter-oil-scandal/
Taiwan Reels From Gutter Oil Scandal
By AUSTIN RAMZY September 8, 2014 6:56 am
September 8, 2014 6:58 am

The authorities in Taiwan are scrambling to control a tainted-cooking-oil scandal that has affected hundreds of manufacturers and raised fears about health risks posed in many commonly consumed food items.

The scandal comes during the Mid-Autumn Festival and has dampened enthusiasm for giving and consuming mooncakes, a traditional seasonal snack.

Regulators are examining the extent to which the substandard oil has been exported to Hong Kong, Macau and mainland China. Hong Kong’s Center for Food Safety said Maxim’s Cakes, a prominent retailer in the Chinese city, had removed from its shelves pineapple cakes made from oil from a Taiwan manufacturer implicated in the scandal.


On Sept. 1 the police raided a factory in southern Taiwan that is accused of producing hundreds of tons of oil that had been recycled from restaurant waste and slaughterhouse byproducts. Another company, Chang Guann, bought and reprocessed the tainted material into 782 tons of oil. Of that, 645 tons of oil were sold widely around Taiwan, with 236 tons recovered thus far, officials from the Taiwanese Food and Drug Administration said Saturday. Some of the unrecovered oil may have already been consumed, they acknowledged.

In recent years illegally recycled oil has emerged as a serious food safety concern in China, where it is known colloquially as “gutter oil.” The substance is dangerous not just because of poor sanitation associated with illegal recycling operations, but because reused oil can contain carcinogens such as benzopyrene and aflatoxin.

So far no cases of illness have been associated with the recycled oil scandal in Taiwan. Yeh Ming-kung, the director of the Food and Drug Administration, said Saturday that there was no immediate health risk from the oil, but the authorities have promised further testing amid criticism from consumers in Taiwan that they are playing down the threat.

Prime Minister Jiang Yi-huah of Taiwan had called for all products known to be made with the tainted oil to be removed from store shelves by Sunday. A day earlier the Food and Drug Administration said about 167 tons of food items had been recovered, including instant noodles, cookies and dumplings.

The recycled oil scandal follows a series of incidents in 2013 that raised questions about the enforcement of food quality standards in Taiwan. Several companies were found to have added illegal coloring agents to cooking oils and diluted olive oil with cheaper products such as cottonseed oil.

“Despite the rise of public attention to food safety and the authorities’ efforts to improve the quality of food manufacturing, the new scandal shows that there is still not enough being done to eliminate lawbreaking production lines,” The Taipei Times said in an editorial Monday that called for harsher punishments for food safety violations.