Opinion Piece: Kaohsiung's 'Food Safety is Great' Is the Emperor's New Clothes of Rice-Field Tail-Cutting

The 50-day gap in the Zhonglian toxic oil case exposed not just a food safety loophole, but a carefully packaged 'double standard' scam jointly orchestrated by central authorities and their political allies. While the central government monopolizes a 50-billion-NTD food safety budget, it blocks local staffing, clings to outdated regulations like Article 7 of the Food Safety Act, and after the incident, collaborates with allied groups to launch cognitive warfare—using decontextualized junk data to shift all blame onto overworked local frontline staff. But I want to ask: where exactly is Kaohsiung's 'food safety is great'? 1. Central Government's Dual Financial and Human Resource Suppression Auditor General Chen Rui-min explicitly stated in the Legislative Yuan that the annual food safety 'five rings' budget amounts to about 4 to 5 billion NT dollars. Legislator Luo Ming-tsai estimates this exceeds 50 billion over ten years. But where did this money go? For example, in the fifth phase of forward-looking food safety construction, the 22 counties and cities nationwide shared only about 100 million NT dollars—less than 1% allocated to local governments. Even more critical, the central government tightly controls the 'Local Government Organizational Standards' and total civil servant quotas. Even if local governments have funds, they are legally prohibited from increasing inspection personnel. As a result, Taichung’s 42 inspectors generate nearly 90,000 inspection cases annually. All local frontline staff across Taiwan are capped under an overwork-inducing staffing ceiling imposed by the central government. 2. Outdated Laws Enable Toxic Oil Chain Reactions The old version of Article 7 of the Food Safety Act has two fatal flaws: • Clause 2 requires businesses to test, but does not specify the 'reporting flow' when toxins are detected—inspection reports are treated as trade secrets, locked in labs and company drawers. • Clause 5 only requires notification if 'finished products' are hazardous—'semi-finished' or 'raw materials' are completely exempt. How did this outdated law cause a chain reaction? First, Taisugar swept its own doorstep. In mid-May, Taisugar detected Zhonglian’s crude oil benzo[a]pyrene levels 7 times above standard (14.7 ppb). But since crude oil is a 'semi-finished product,' not a 'product,' it was exempt from reporting under Clause 5. Taisugar chose silence to protect its reputation, and the early warning vanished. Second, Zhonglian refined and passed inspection. Knowing there was no 'mandatory direct reporting mechanism' between third-party testing agencies and the Food Safety Cloud, Zhonglian boldly refined and diluted the toxic oil, then resold it to Fuschow, Tatung, and Nanchiao. Third, Nanchiao covered up with retesting. On May 13, Nanchiao also detected abnormalities in raw materials. But since the old law didn’t require 'reporting within hours,' Nanchiao legally conducted a one-month 'self-reverification process.' By then, the toxic oil had already been made into finished products and distributed nationwide. On June 30, Zhonglian was finally forced to report. The 50-day gap turned into a full-blown disaster. 3. Real Data Completely Debunks 'Kaohsiung is Great' After the storm erupted, green camp allies launched a cognitive warfare campaign, widely distributing infographics: 'Kaohsiung tested Taisugar 18 times in 5 years, Taipei 0 times, Taichung 1 time,' aiming to smear Taipei and Taichung as negligent. But when real data is revealed, the narrative collapses. Taipei City: There are no large-scale oil manufacturing plants within its jurisdiction, so inspection counts are naturally zero. But in the past three years, Taipei conducted 90 random market inspections on oil products. On July 2, the same day it received the report, Taipei proactively raided Nanchiao’s headquarters and was the first to publish inspection results. Taichung City: Over the past five years, it conducted 89 inspections at local oil factories, sampled 72 batches, and performed 158 market oil inspections. In 2025 alone, Taichung conducted 67 oil inspections under special projects and market checks, including 30 at oil plants. Its 42 inspectors achieve nearly 90,000 citywide inspections annually. In contrast, Kaohsiung: Despite having 11 oil factories in its jurisdiction, all 18 inspections over five years were concentrated on Taisugar, which is 90% state-owned. Kaohsiung City Health Bureau still refuses to disclose inspection data for the other 10 private oil factories. Allies use the 18 inspections of just one company to mock Taipei’s normal market oversight and Taichung’s citywide survey of 30 inspections across 26 factories—using data from inspecting one company to ridicule cities that conduct comprehensive citywide checks. This is logical suicide. 4. 'Kaohsiung is Great' Is Rice-Field Tail-Cutting The most absurd part is the complete reversal of causality. On July 2, at the initial outbreak, it was Taichung and Taipei health bureaus that took the lead, proactively sending their limited staff to raid Zhonglian and Nanchiao, seizing ledgers and cross-referencing distribution routes overnight, forcing the central government to issue a nationwide alert. Kaohsiung Health Bureau remained passively观望 on July 2, only 'passively initiating' action on July 4 after the central government was forced to announce the distribution list. The 49 products Kaohsiung announced for withdrawal on July 9 were all finished goods from large manufacturers in other counties—Tatung, Fuschow—that had flowed into Kaohsiung’s end-market channels. Kaohsiung completely reaped the harvest of the overworked frontline inspectors in Taipei and Taichung, yet was packaged by allies as 'Kaohsiung is the strictest, Kaohsiung is great.' 5. Central Government Finally 'Copies Homework' As early as 2022, Taichung City proposed an EU-style 'mandatory third-party direct reporting' solution, requiring testing agencies detecting anomalies to be required to report directly to local authorities. The central government passively blocked this for two years, allowing toxic oil to spread, and afterward used junk data for cognitive warfare. Only after public outrage exploded did the Executive Yuan urgently pass a Food Safety Act amendment on July 23: establishing a 'mandatory direct reporting obligation' for third-party certified testing agencies, and strictly requiring businesses to report within '24 hours,' with fines up to 30 million NT dollars for violations. This amendment, which almost entirely copies Taichung’s two-year-old proposal, is the heaviest real-world boomerang against all decontextualized blame-shifting political stunts. I’ve accumulated 3,200 public welfare lectures, including multiple public opinion literacy courses at Zuoxin Library, with audiences ranging from children to seniors. The most valuable lesson I’ve learned: people don’t need opinions fed to them—they need uncorrupted information. I won’t shout slogans here. Instead, I leave you with three things to check: 1. Check budget flows—of the 50 billion NT dollars in food safety funding, how much did local governments receive? 2. Check inspection data—Kaohsiung’s 18 inspections were all on Taisugar; where are the other 10 oil factories? 3. Check the timeline—what did Kaohsiung do between May 15 and July 9? After checking, judge for yourself. Carcinogens don’t become less toxic just because of who’s in power. Food safety shouldn’t forever be a tool for political warfare. I’m not here to take sides—I’m here to remind you—your cognitive autonomy is the final line of defense. *Author: Public Welfare Public Opinion Literacy Instructor, Freelance Writer