The watchdog said that ‘food safety issues should return to facts and science,’ and that it would continue to enforce guidance based on scientific evidence

27/07/2026 (Taipei Times) - Random sampling of 275 cooking oil and fats products between 2022 and last year all complied with the legal limit for the carcinogen benzopyrene, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) said yesterday, denying a rumor that 60 percent of oil products have failed testing since 2023.

Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus whip Fu Kun-chi (傅?萁) on Thursday last week cited data presented by Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Lin Shu-fen (林淑芬) at a meeting a day before, saying that an FDA report in 2021 showed initial Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point (HACCP) inspections at cooking oil plants had a passing rate of less than 60 percent.

Some local Chinese-language media reported that Fu, while attending an election campaign event in Hualien yesterday, said that the health minister admitted that random inspections on cooking oil since 2021 found failure rates up to 60 percent, so all Taiwanese might have been under food safety risks for the past five years.

In response, the FDA yesterday said that the 2021 report was based on joint inspections on 63 cooking oil factories by the central and local governments between 2018 and 2020, which showed less than 60 percent complied with HACCP standards in the initial inspections.

Most of the inspections failed, as they did not keep required records or had made poor records of their manufacturing process, it said.

The 2021 report did not indicate that “60 percent of edible oil products failed inspections since 2023,” the agency added.

The flaws found in the inspections were mostly improved when local health departments conducted inspections again in the same year, it said, adding that the management flaws cannot be directly used to make inferences about the safety of cooking oil.

The FDA said random sampling of 275 cooking oil and fats products between 2022 and last year all passed benzopyrene testing.

“Food safety issues should return to facts and science,” it said, adding that it would continue to enforce inspections, guidance and supervision based on scientific evidence and risk management principles to strictly monitor cooking oil safety and safeguard public health.

https://www.taipeitimes.com/News/taiwan/archives/2026/07/27/2003861450