Oil scandal harms Made In Taiwan cosmetics
Taiwan News, Staff Writer
2014-09-18 07:12 PM
TAIPEI (Taiwan News) – The scandal over the use of recycled kitchen waste oil is harming the image of Made In Taiwan products which have nothing to do with the oil, reports said Thursday.
The distribution of lard oil made with recycled kitchen waste oil and imported animal feed oil unfit for human consumption caused a scandal this month which led to products from over 1,000 food producers, bakeries and restaurants being banned.
More recently, even companies overseas have refused to sell Taiwanese cosmetics products which had nothing to do with the oil scare, the Chinese-language United Evening News reported Thursday.
The Taiwanese manufacturer of Timeless Truth facial masks reportedly received a letter from an Italian distributor Wednesday which said its clients did not want to buy products reported as made in Taiwan.
The masks, which are exported to 17 countries, would have a hard time finding buyers because of the waste oil scandal, the company said. Even worse was the damage to the general image of Taiwanese products which were completely unrelated to the oil scare, Timeless Truth managers said.
The letter from Italy said the refusal to buy Taiwanese products had already become a market consensus which was difficult to counter.
A manager at the Taiwanese company said they would emphasize in their reply to the Italian distributor that their products were not made with lard oil, and that only the food sector had been affected. In the end, it was still possible to export the products to other countries, the manager said.
Other Taiwanese cosmetics exporters had also encountered difficulties in European markets, even though the doubts came from distributors and not from governments, the United Evening News reported.
In the wake of the oil scandal, the government announced tougher measures Wednesday. Whistleblowers would be encouraged to report food safety violations while business people found to have caused deaths could face life in prison.
The government has come under fire for lax supervision of safety standards amid the import of animal feed oil from Hong Kong, which is now likely to be banned, and the recycling of kitchen waste by illegal businesses.
