The fraudulence of selling expired frozen foods uncovered- More than 20 tons of expired products seized and illegalprofit has reached NTD 132 million
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- Last updated：2019-01-05
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The fraudulence of selling expired frozen foods uncovered
- More than 20 tons of expired products seized and illegal profit has reached NTD 132 million
It has been reported by the Department of Health of Kaohsiung City Government (DOH) that a company located in Renwu District was suspected of trafficking expired frozen seafood. Upon the report, the Chief Prosecutor at Kaohsiung District Prosecutors Office therefore assigned Head Prosecutor Li and Prosecutor Zhuang to take lead. After complete investigation, the prosecutors commanded the Seventh Special Police Corps of National Police Agency, along with Food and Drug Administration and DOH, to search headquarter and warehouses of the suspected company. Tons of overdue freezing seafood (including copper plate of fish, small volume, and white octopus) and some products without date labels have been found in the company and its freezers. Prosecutors therefore questioned the company’s owner and staff, 11 people in total.
After the interrogation, the owner and employees were found knowingly. Since the above company had imported lots of fish, neritic squid and so on from Vietnam and Thailand, the importation was stored in the company’s freezer and warehouses for a long period of time. However, they concealed the fact that freezing products were expired, removing the date labels on the products and selling them in market price to innocent restaurants and wholesalers, who unware resold to customers in public market. The company consequently benefited from the illegal gain of NTD 132 million. It was charged as a breach of Article 339 of Criminal Law and Article 5 of Act Governing Food Safety and Sanitation, so that the owner was accordingly awarded NTD 300,000 bail and the employees were temporarily sent back.
On the day of the search, Prosecutor Zhuang has issued an order to seal up the products, 14 items, in question, weighing a total of 20,477 kilograms, in order to ensure public health and hygiene.