President Ma Ying-jeou is set to call a high-level national security meeting on Monday evening to discuss food safety. That’s following a series of food safety scandals which have rocked the nation.
This is the second such meeting that the president has called. In a similar meeting last Monday, President Ma upgraded the Cabinet’s working group on food safety to a “Food Safety Office”, which can pool the resources of different ministries in order to tackle the problem.
President Ma will preside over the meeting in person; other participants will include the vice president, the premier and the heads of about ten related ministries and bureaus. The goal is to discuss how the crisis is being handled, and what measures have been taken so far.
The president said that the recent string of food scandals involving illegal edible oils had led to waning consumer confidence and had affected Taiwan’s image. He said that the purpose of the meeting will be to pool together resources, and strengthen the nation’s plan for addressing the problem in the hopes of ensuring food safety and rebuilding consumer confidence.