Cheng I Food Co (正義食品) was yesterday ordered to pay NT$9.36 million (US$288,524) in compensation to more than 3,000 people after a class-action lawsuit filed by the Consumer Protection Association of Taiwan in a tainted cooking oil case from 2014.
The association said the decision by the Kaohsiung District Court fell short of the public’s expectations, as the case was filed on behalf of more than 5,000 people, who requested NT$90,000 each for a total of NT$478.35 million.
“We are disappointed by the ruling and the court did not take into account the damage to consumers’ health, so we will certainly appeal,” association officials said.
Photo: Tsai Ching-hua, Taipei Times
The decision was the first ruling on the case and it can be appealed.
The ruling requires the company to pay less than 2 percent of the total compensation sought through the lawsuit against Cheng I Food, a subsidiary of Ting Hsin International Group (頂新國際集團).
Cheng I Food allegedly mixed low-grade animal feed oil with cooking oil and sold it for human consumption with packaging and marketing efforts to make it appear to be high-grade cooking oil.
Investigators said that Cheng I Food purchased animal feed oil from Hsin Hao Corp (鑫好企業), a one-man operation based in Kaohsiung, whose proprietor, Wu Jung-ho (吳容合), was a sales representative for Cheng I Food until he resigned in 2004.
Wu has been charged with fraud and breaching the Act Governing Food Safety and Sanitation (食品安全衛生管理法).
Presiding Judge Shih Po-hung (施柏宏) said Cheng I Food was not aware of the source of the products it purchased from the suppliers and therefore the company was also a victim in the case.
Shih said the compensation figure was based on the cooking oil’s use to prepare meals at 23 schools with a total of 3,123 students at NT$3,000 per student.
Cheng I Food yesterday released a statement saying that the company respects the rights of consumers and fully understands the importance of food safety.
It added that in February, the court had found the company not guilty of criminal practices in a related case.
The statement said that the court had agreed with the company’s stance in the just-concluded case that it was not attempting to defraud its customers, but that the “company was deceived by our supplier” and the “supplier sold questionable oil to our company and we were not aware of the situation.”
CHANGE OF MIND: The Chinese crew at first showed a willingness to cooperate, but later regretted that when the ship arrived at the port and refused to enter Togolese Republic-registered Chinese freighter Hong Tai (宏泰號) and its crew have been detained on suspicion of deliberately damaging a submarine cable connecting Taiwan proper and Penghu County, the Coast Guard Administration said in a statement yesterday. The case would be subject to a “national security-level investigation” by the Tainan District Prosecutors’ Office, it added. The administration said that it had been monitoring the ship since 7:10pm on Saturday when it appeared to be loitering in waters about 6 nautical miles (11km) northwest of Tainan’s Chiang Chun Fishing Port, adding that the ship’s location was about 0.5 nautical miles north of the No.
A Chinese freighter that allegedly snapped an undersea cable linking Taiwan proper to Penghu County is suspected of being owned by a Chinese state-run company and had docked at the ports of Kaohsiung and Keelung for three months using different names. On Tuesday last week, the Togo-flagged freighter Hong Tai 58 (宏泰58號) and its Chinese crew were detained after the Taipei-Penghu No. 3 submarine cable was severed. When the Coast Guard Administration (CGA) first attempted to detain the ship on grounds of possible sabotage, its crew said the ship’s name was Hong Tai 168, although the Automatic Identification System (AIS)
An Akizuki-class destroyer last month made the first-ever solo transit of a Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force ship through the Taiwan Strait, Japanese government officials with knowledge of the matter said yesterday. The JS Akizuki carried out a north-to-south transit through the Taiwan Strait on Feb. 5 as it sailed to the South China Sea to participate in a joint exercise with US, Australian and Philippine forces that day. The Japanese destroyer JS Sazanami in September last year made the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force’s first-ever transit through the Taiwan Strait, but it was joined by vessels from New Zealand and Australia,
COORDINATION, ASSURANCE: Separately, representatives reintroduced a bill that asks the state department to review guidelines on how the US engages with Taiwan US senators on Tuesday introduced the Taiwan travel and tourism coordination act, which they said would bolster bilateral travel and cooperation. The bill, proposed by US senators Marsha Blackburn and Brian Schatz, seeks to establish “robust security screenings for those traveling to the US from Asia, open new markets for American industry, and strengthen the economic partnership between the US and Taiwan,” they said in a statement. “Travel and tourism play a crucial role in a nation’s economic security,” but Taiwan faces “pressure and coercion from the Chinese Communist Party [CCP]” in this sector, the statement said. As Taiwan is a “vital trading
RSS