Opinion Piece: Don't Let Rule of Law Die for Emotion — On Professor Chan's Legal and Governance Misconceptions Regarding Taisugar's Reporting Obligation

Following the recent discovery of benzopyrene超标 in soybean oil produced by Chung Lien Oils, public concern has surged. Public health scholar Professor Chan Chang-chuan published an article titled "Should Taisugar Report Benzopyrene-Contaminated Oil?", urging greater attention to food safety prevention at the source and the social responsibility of state-owned enterprises from a public health and preventive medicine perspective. However, objectively speaking, Professor Chan's arguments contain serious misconceptions regarding legal applicability, supply chain practices, and the conflation of "moral expectations" with the "principles of a rule-of-law state", potentially leading society down a dangerous path of replacing legal reasoning with emotion and retroactively assigning responsibility based on hindsight.

To properly assess this controversy, we must return to the current legal framework, industrial realities, and fundamental boundaries of modern administrative law, clarifying several critical blind spots:

1. Confusing "Legal Certainty" with "Expansive Interpretation of Policy Expectations"

Professor Chan attempts to expand the reporting obligation under Article 7, Paragraph 5 of the current Food Safety and Sanitation Management Act—which applies when "a product poses a potential hazard"—to include "raw materials rejected before contract acceptance" by referencing inspection provisions in Article 3 or Article 7, Paragraph 2 of the same law. This is a classic example in administrative jurisprudence of "using post-hoc political and policy expectations to retroactively impose legal liability." Under Taiwan's rule-of-law framework, administrative and criminal penalties must strictly adhere to the principles of legal reservation and legal certainty. Article 7 of the current Food Safety Act imposes recall and reporting obligations on "products." In this case, Taisugar conducted sampling inspections at Chung Lien's facility during procurement and immediately rejected the batch upon detecting超标 benzopyrene levels. The crude oil never entered Taisugar's supply chain, and Taisugar never acquired ownership.

If regulatory authorities or courts arbitrarily expand reporting obligations to non-owners based on purposive interpretation, businesses will face unpredictable legal risks. In fact, the Executive Yuan's subsequent proposal for extensive legislative amendments proves precisely that "the current law indeed cannot achieve this." If the existing law already covered such cases, why would the government need to introduce new provisions?

2. Confusing "Raw Material Rejection" with "Supply Chain Reporting Responsibility": The Fundamental Difference Between Taisugar and Chin Chiang Cases

In public discourse, the "Taisugar case" is often conflated with the "Chin Chiang case," with critics questioning why Chin Chiang was penalized while Taisugar was not, despite both detecting超标 substances. To clarify this misconception, we must distinguish the differences in "ownership, inspection location, and legal status":

Chin Chiang Case (Statutory Reporting Obligor): Chin Chiang conducted internal inspections on edible oil products (or semi-finished goods) that it had already purchased, acquired ownership of, and intended to use in production. Since the oil had already entered its facility and supply chain, Chin Chiang was legally the holder and manufacturer. Failing to report超标 levels violated Article 7, Paragraph 5 of the Food Safety Act, making the penalty fully justified.

Taisugar Case (Contract Acceptance and Transaction Rejection): Taisugar conducted procurement inspections at the seller's (Chung Lien Oils) facility. Upon detecting超标 crude oil before taking delivery, Taisugar immediately rejected the shipment and canceled the transaction. The problematic oil remained entirely within the seller's premises. Taisugar neither purchased it, acquired ownership, nor allowed it into its supply chain or factory.

Professor Chan criticized Taisugar for "returning" the oil solely to protect its own interests, failing to assist the government in early risk detection. However, the term "return" is factually inaccurate—no sale was completed, the goods (crude oil) never entered Taisugar's possession, and ownership was never transferred. Thus, there was no "return." Moreover, this argument overlooks the fundamental nature of supply chain division and contractual acceptance in modern free markets.

In industrial practice, the true source of illegality and the statutory reporting obligor is Chung Lien Oils, which produced and owned the defective product. Requiring a buyer who successfully prevented toxic oil from entering its supply chain by rejecting an uncompleted transaction to bear the seller's reporting responsibility is not only inconsistent with civil law principles of ownership but would also create a fatal chilling effect across the entire industry. If businesses face reporting obligations and penalty risks for goods they never owned and transactions that never closed, they will be discouraged from rigorous inspection. Such reverse causality accusations would severely harm food safety defenses.

3. Confusing "Social Responsibility of State-Owned Enterprises" with "Rule-of-Law Governance"

Professor Chan emphasizes that as a state-owned enterprise, Taisugar should not merely "follow the law" but should uphold higher standards of public governance. While state-owned enterprises do carry greater public trust and public service missions, in a democratic rule-of-law state, the determination of "legality" must be based on objective criteria. We cannot arbitrarily expand legal interpretations based on identity. If Taisugar legally had no reporting obligation, holding it liable due to public pressure would undermine administrative jurisprudence and damage the rule-of-law principle. Enhancing the public performance of state-owned enterprises should be achieved through internal controls and administrative guidance, not by imposing extra-legal responsibilities without statutory basis.

4. Embracing Preventive Medicine While Acknowledging Legal Limits

Professor Chan quotes Bernardino Ramazzini, the father of occupational medicine: "Prevention is better than cure"—a golden rule all public health professionals should remember. However, advanced systems like the EU's RASFF rapid alert system are never built by "punishing buyers without legal authority," but by "robust legislation and mandatory reporting mechanisms."

Precisely because the current law has loopholes (covering finished products but not rejected raw materials), the Executive Yuan has proposed amendments to include laboratory anomalies and raw material stages in 24-hour mandatory reporting. We should support these amendments to strengthen the system. But before new laws take effect, we must honestly acknowledge the limits of current law.

The real lesson from food safety crises is that governments must patch systemic gaps, businesses must enforce self-inspection, and those who conceal violations must face severe consequences. We seek a more trustworthy food safety system—but it must not be built on the quicksand of "distorting current laws" and "emotionally blaming compliant enterprises."

*Author: Public health scholar, National Resilience Researcher