Namchow Group (南僑集團) chairman Alfred Chen (陳飛龍) yesterday called on the government to gear the nation’s food safety regulations to international standards.
Chen made the remarks a week after a subsidary of one of Namchow’s peers, Ting Hsin International Group (頂新集團), was accused of adding oil meant for animal feed to products meant for human consumption.
Following a series of food safety scandals over the past three years, foreign markets have developed concerns with Taiwanese food products and even labeled them as unacceptable, Chen said.
That has severely affected the nation’s food industry, he said.
“The nation must not face the food safety issue behind closed doors,” he said.
Chen said there is still a lot of room to improve food safety regulations and introduce stricter international standards, which might deter food manufacturers from breaking the rules.
Taking the latest oil scandal as an example, he said the government should carefully watch where recalled oil products go in the future.
Without a clear mechanism, recalled oil products might have a chance of flowing back onto the market, violating food safety standards again, Chen said.
Instead, the government should encourage the nation’s industrial oil manufacturers to consume the recalled oil, he added.
Namchow Group yesterday demonstrated the achievement of Lucky Royal Co Ltd (皇家可口), a subsidiary operating the Duroyal (杜老爺) ice cream brand, in adopting a technology-based food traceability management system connected to the government’s public cloud.
Chen said the group has invested hundreds of thousands of New Taiwan dollars in constructing a high-quality food traceability management system to help the company better control products and also improve consumer confidence in Lucky Royal.
The group plans to further strengthen the system in its other major businesses within three years, he added.
Meanwhile, Namchow Chemical Industrial Co (南僑化學工業), the group’s flagship unit and a listed company on the Taiwan Stock Exchange, saw net income totaling NT$634 million (US$20.83 million), or NT$2.55 per share, in the first eight months of the year, with consolidated sales in the first nine months of the year up 11.09 percent from a year earlier to NT$11.05 billion.
The group is set to launch a five-day product exhibition today.
Semiconductor business between Taiwan and the US is a “win-win” model for both sides given the high level of complementarity, the government said yesterday responding to tariff threats from US President Donald Trump. Home to the world’s largest contract chipmaker, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), Taiwan is a key link in the global technology supply chain for companies such as Apple Inc and Nvidia Corp. Trump said on Monday he plans to impose tariffs on imported chips, pharmaceuticals and steel in an effort to get the producers to make them in the US. “Taiwan and the US semiconductor and other technology industries
A start-up in Mexico is trying to help get a handle on one coastal city’s plastic waste problem by converting it into gasoline, diesel and other fuels. With less than 10 percent of the world’s plastics being recycled, Petgas’ idea is that rather than letting discarded plastic become waste, it can become productive again as fuel. Petgas developed a machine in the port city of Boca del Rio that uses pyrolysis, a thermodynamic process that heats plastics in the absence of oxygen, breaking it down to produce gasoline, diesel, kerosene, paraffin and coke. Petgas chief technology officer Carlos Parraguirre Diaz said that in
SMALL AND EFFICIENT: The Chinese AI app’s initial success has spurred worries in the US that its tech giants’ massive AI spending needs re-evaluation, a market strategist said Chinese artificial intelligence (AI) start-up DeepSeek’s (深度求索) eponymous AI assistant rocketed to the top of Apple Inc’s iPhone download charts, stirring doubts in Silicon Valley about the strength of the US’ technological dominance. The app’s underlying AI model is widely seen as competitive with OpenAI and Meta Platforms Inc’s latest. Its claim that it cost much less to train and develop triggered share moves across Asia’s supply chain. Chinese tech firms linked to DeepSeek, such as Iflytek Co (科大訊飛), surged yesterday, while chipmaking tool makers like Advantest Corp slumped on the potential threat to demand for Nvidia Corp’s AI accelerators. US stock
SUBSIDIES: The nominee for commerce secretary indicated the Trump administration wants to put its stamp on the plan, but not unravel it entirely US President Donald Trump’s pick to lead the agency in charge of a US$52 billion semiconductor subsidy program declined to give it unqualified support, raising questions about the disbursement of funds to companies like Intel Corp and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (台積電). “I can’t say that I can honor something I haven’t read,” Howard Lutnick, Trump’s nominee for commerce secretary, said of the binding CHIPS and Science Act awards in a confirmation hearing on Wednesday. “To the extent monies have been disbursed, I would commit to rigorously enforcing documents that have been signed by those companies to make sure we get
RSS