President Ma Ying-jeou said on Thursday that his administration will do its best to tackle food safety problems.
Taiwan has been hit by a series of food safety scandals. A large number of products have been pulled off shelves and several people have been charged with violating food safety laws. President Ma pledged to tackle food safety problems so that people can eat safely.
“[The food safety problems] actually started eight or nine years ago; some even earlier than that," said Ma. "But since we caught these problems during my term, my administration will shoulder the responsibility for them. We will launch investigations and arrest the culprits. We have already taken into custody 19 executives from the companies that sold tainted oil. Some of them have been prosecuted and we will continue our investigation.”
President Ma said that the Cabinet has already established a food safety office in September to step up food safety measures. He added that in order to protect Taiwanese people’s health and Taiwan’s international reputation, the government will tighten food safety controls, conduct investigation on any food safety violations, and make the results public as soon as possible.
Meanwhile, Premier Jiang Yi-huah held a press conference Thursday afternoon to give a report on the latest progress of the food safety investigation. Jiang urged the central and local governments to work with each other to tackle the problems instead of blaming each other. He added that the current food safety issues are complicated and will take some time to resolve.