Food safety is a common topic of discussion for any healthy democracy, and while carcinogens are a legitimate concern, the KMT is leveraging the public outcry over tainted oil for cheap political gain while failing to pass laws.
The KMT’s latest manufactured outrage is over food safety and started with a press conference held by KMT Chair Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) on Friday at her party’s headquarters. Cheng is widely known as an openly pro-China figure.
She visited Beijing to meet with Chinese leader Xi Jinping in April. Following Cheng’s announcement of this weekend’s food safety street protests, Taipei City Councilor Yang Chih-tou (楊植斗) and three other KMT city councilor candidates went online to announce their 144-hour hunger strike.
The rally will take place on Ketagalan Boulevard, right across from the Presidential Office. With Cheng at the helm of the party, it would be unsurprising for the KMT to act in alignment with the likes of Beijing.
The controversy was sparked by the Central Union Oil scandal when a downstream consumer discovered excessive amounts of the carcinogen benzo[a]pyrene in soybean cooking oil late last month. BaP can adversely affect fertility and hormone production. The oil exceeding safety limits was produced in April and is being inspected by the Ministry of Health and Welfare.
What is amusing is how an opportunity to raise awareness with the general public and improve actual safety standards in the country has become a circus of attacking the administration. KMT heavyweights from Taipei Mayor Chiang Wan-an (蔣萬安) to Taichung Mayor Lu Shiow-yen (盧秀燕) are blaming President Lai Ching-te (賴清德) and the DPP for an issue that is largely the responsibility of local governments.
Food Safety Act
As the chief elected official for their respective city governments, Chiang and Lu have both been criticized for neglect when it comes to attending city government meetings on food safety and a lack of frequent carcinogen inspections.
Chiang has missed over 70% of such meetings in Taipei. Meanwhile, Lu’s government allegedly only conducted one test on Central Union Oil, having conducted only a single inspection of the plant in the past eight years. It is worth noting that the problematic oil was produced in Lu’s city of Taichung.
The Food Safety Act mandates that local municipalities bear responsibility for carrying out the appropriate food safety inspections. The central government’s role is to oversee overarching traceability.
Instead of working to prevent and eliminate hazardous chemicals from physically reaching their residents, they are attending high-profile press conferences and putting up a show on the streets. While Chiang repeats calls for people to join the Saturday rally, it is stunning that his own city government failed to detect the problematic oil when it reached distributors in Taipei.
The hypocrisy does not end there. The KMT is the very reason why Taiwan cannot move forward on food safety along with other vital reforms, including national defense.
KMT legislators have stalled the very tools needed for enhancing such standards. While the party capitalizes on public outrage, its legislative caucus has consistently slashed Food and Drug Administration budgets and expenses necessary for the Ministry of Health and Welfare to effectively operate.
Channel for concerns
When it comes to enacting laws, KMT legislators have stalled legislation on regulating food safety. Instead of working across different levels of government for the public good, it chooses to launch a coordinated smear campaign to shift blame for its own local inadequacies to the central government.
In stark contrast, the DPP-led central government has focused on real action that makes a difference in food safety. Premier Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰) led a meeting with the mayors of all six of Taiwan’s special municipalities on Tuesday to address proposed amendments to the Food Safety Act.
The amendments introduce a tiered monitoring system on food businesses and a platform to enhance information sharing between the central and local governments.
The DPP legislative caucus is also actively advocating for amendments to the Food Safety Act. The caucus has proposed a framework that takes into account the ground issues faced by central government agencies.
This will create a channel for food safety concerns to be addressed between such agencies and the mayors of Taiwan’s six special municipalities, where 70% of the population resides. DPP legislators are also working to tighten food safety regulations by requiring batch-by-batch testing for high-risk food businesses, certification for in-house laboratories, and tougher penalties for businesses that falsify or hide food safety figures.
Free speech exploited
Lin Chu-yin (林楚茵), a key proponent of the amendments and a member of the DPP legislative caucus, has labelled the KMT-led hunger strike a political stunt. She has directly called out the hypocrisy of the KMT-led Taichung city government.
Not only has the KMT shown few signs of working to enact meaningful change in improving food safety, but they have also failed to inspect the catalyst of this debate, problematic oil in their own city.
The debacle is another demonstration of how free speech can often be exploited in democracies. What could have been a healthy debate on food safety became a lost opportunity to raise awareness among consumers and ensure corporate accountability.
Make no mistake, discussions on food safety are a real topic that needs to be addressed. From the excessive plasticizer levels in 2011, to the widespread adulterated oil scandal in 2014, and excessive ethylene oxide in Indonesian instant noodle imports in 2023, successive KMT and DPP administrations have been faced with food safety issues.
However, the KMT has used this issue for political theater, even in the face of negligence in detecting the root cause of harm in their own municipalities. Also, the influence of extensive disinformation channeled from China to discredit the DPP administration and sow discord in Taiwanese society is yet to be known.
What is certain is the KMT’s alignment of messaging with Beijing, with their framing of Saturday's event as, “I am human, I oppose poisoning Taiwan” (我是人，我反毒台), which is a clear play on the Mandarin characters that both the CPP and KMT use to oppose Taiwan independence (反台獨).
What Taiwan needs is a sincere debate on how the country can better protect the public when it comes to food safety. In line with the DPP caucus’ strategy, this requires bipartisan cooperation and enhancing the legal framework that requires governments at both central and local levels to better implement stricter penalties and inspections — and boost consumer awareness and corporate accountability.
Rath Wang is a political commentator based in Taipei focusing on Taiwan’s politics, media, civil society, and key issues influencing Taiwan’s future. He is a media producer and host of current affairs talk shows and podcasts and has worked on political campaigns and lived in Taiwan, Japan, Thailand, and the US.
