Cottonseed oil scandal

This scandal has been slowly brewing over the past week, and I’m kind of surprised that nobody has commented on it yet:

FDA says unaware of tainted oil

I admit that I didn’t know anything about cottonseed oil (other than it comes from cottonseeds) until yesterday when I started googling it.

It’s actually very unhealthy stuff. The first concern is whether or not it contains gossypol - which can be removed - which is known to damage the human reproductive system. It’s claimed that the oil sold in Taiwan had the gossypol removed, but that isn’t the only issue with cottonseed oil. It’s also way too high in saturated fat and too low in mono-unsaturated fat, and is thus about the most unhealthy cooking oil you could eat (leading to heart problems, strokes, etc). A further issue is that it may contain high levels of pesticide residue, since cotton is not a food crop and thus isn’t subject to the usual regulations concerning pesticides sprayed on food.

Apparently, the Chang Chi Foodstuff Factory Company knowing mislabeled cottonseed oil as canola, sunflower, etc, and even took steps to chemically alter the oil to hide what they were doing from government food inspectors.

So yes, they deserve to be prosecuted.

Now the interesting part - I looked to see what the status of cottonseed oil is in the USA (which is where Chang Chi’s oil was imported from). As it turns out, there is plenty of cottonseed oil sold in the USA. It’s often added to snack foods, and the fine print on the label will say something like “may contain one or more of the following oils: canola, safflower, corn, sunflower, palm, cottonseed…”

As it turns out, whenever the label says that, it’s 100% certain that it will be cottonseed oil, because it’s the cheapest oil of all by a wide margin. If they weren’t using cottonseed oil, they wouldn’t mention it, but they hope you won’t notice by burying it among other possible candidate cooking oils.

Very closely related to the above: the labels on food products in the USA that declare “0% trans-fats.” As it turns out, that’s a big lie. The US FDA allows this label for any food that contains .49 grams or less of trans-fat per serving. So how big is a serving? If a normal serving of peanut butter is a tablespoon, it might (I’m making this number up for illustration) contain 1.0 grams of trans-fat. But if we define the serving size as one teaspoon, it will be less than 0.5 grams which means it’s 0% in FDA-speak. See:

feedyourheaddiet.com/the-trans-fat-lie.html

In short, easy as it is to criticize food practices in Taiwan, I wouldn’t go looking to the USA (which many here do) as a shining example of food product safety. I think that Taiwan overall does a better job of policing the food industry than many supposedly more developed countries. But obviously, all is not perfect here.

Thanks for this info.

The more I know about processed food, the more I only want to eat all-natural foods in their natural form.

The more I learn about farming practices, the more I want a garden.

The more I learn about GMO and chemical fertilizers, the more I want to plant a completely organic non-GMO garden.

But the real question is, who has time for this shit?

sigh…

Olive oil that is not olive oil, peanut oil that has no peanuts… sigh What I do not get is how a chemical -with all the processing it entails- is far cheaper than a natural, unadulterated thing. It is baffling that the human consumption system is set in such a way. And I mean economically I “get” it, morally I don’t. Cancer rates through the roof, fertility rates at the bottom -one has to be grateful of small favors, heaven knows what damage those chemicals are doing to potential future generations. They say: it is only a small amount. The problem is a small amount of chemicals -cancer promoting ones- in oil joins the ones from pesticides in vegetables plus the plasticizers in bread and cookies plus whatever can be in the water/air/etc… and we have a big problem.

Next big scandal is going to be the milk… again.

[quote=“NonTocareLeTete”]Thanks for this info.

The more I know about processed food, the more I only want to eat all-natural foods in their natural form.

The more I learn about farming practices, the more I want a garden.

The more I learn about GMO and chemical fertilizers, the more I want to plant a completely organic non-GMO garden.
[/quote]

I have exactly the same reaction. As the OP said, things may be bad in Taiwan, but they really are not much better in The West. I didn’t know about the labelling issues he mentioned; that’s just mad, but you can be pretty confident there was an awful lot of lobbying going on behind the scenes to get the legislation to a point where food manufacturers are able to do such things with impunity. The US food system is fucked up, and Europe is pretty similar.

I do :slight_smile:

You’d be surprised what you have time for if you want it badly enough. I’ve been fiddling about with organic farming/gardening on a small scale for about 3 years now, and I’m just about to buy a 10ha plot (not in Taiwan, obviously) to try some ideas on a commercial scale. The revolution isn’t here yet, but the momentum is building. However, before Big Ag goes down in flames, I predict a massive backlash as they attempt to prevent their demise. Governments will support them and cover up wrongdoing. It’s not going to be pretty.

I miss this guy…bumped into him once at a local coffee shop. When he died he was actually in the middle of researching another food scandal.

http://youtu.be/b-amS-MRaWs

The problem with business people is that mostly gain goes before ethics … no matter what … in Taiwan they think that when caught a paisay will suffice to set things right … it’s a gambling game

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Labelling is something that also concerns me, you’ll see many tricks where they hide the ingredients in generic statements of vegetable oil, carbohydrates, starch, various scientific names for different sugars in a row.

Something that is very useful to know, food manufacturers must list ingredients in order of biggest % quantity, so you can get a ROUGH idea of the relevant amounts from that as well as from the calorific information.

But they try to confuse this by, as mentioned earlier, listing a bunch of oils in a row, or a bunch of different sugars in a row.

Well, that’s because it does. A bit of bowing and scraping and then it’s back to business as usual.

And this is why I now buy more imported products for basic foodstuffs than I otherwise would. I would prefer to buy locally but the growing uncertainty about the safety and labeling of local products has made this difficult. The price of many imported items are also competitive with Taiwan products so it is an easy choice. It’s better to vary the source of your food if possible.

Also worth mentioning is the scandal a couple of weeks back involving a company that sold rice from Thailand and Vietnam as 100% Taiwan grown rice.

What’s also bad is that these are BIG companies, not just small fry.

…which means they sell their stuff to restaurants, food manufacturers -cookies, snacks, etc.-, small food stands, purveyors of bientangs, etc… :doh:

Yep, the major customer for Da Tong company’s oil was the military. Their oil was also the cheapest so I imagine it was the most commonly used for restaurants, catering and street food.

I expected that this food scandal would soon become politicized. Didn’t have to wait long:

taipeitimes.com/News/taiwan/ … 2003575263

However, I agree that the penalties enacted so far haven’t been severe enough. But this case still isn’t over with. Right now, the offending company’s assets are frozen. Personally, I think criminal charges would be warranted. This isn’t some of kind of unintentional mistake, this company went out of its way to mislabel very unhealthy cheap cottonseed oil as olive oil, peanut oil, etc, and bank the resulting profits. Reports indicate this has been going on for at least seven years. It’s more than just fraud - who knows how many people have had their health seriously impaired as a result?

Another media overcry … refined cottonseed oil is used worldwide in shortenings and margarins, for a long long time, just read the labels … (soya oil and/or cottonseed oil) on many … used in cookies and other processed foods in the US and other countries … it’s cheap and available.

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What’s the difference in price between cottonseed oil and olive oil? I bet it is substantial.
And they did this for seven years? That’s a long time. Maybe the punishment should equal the profit the company made over the last 7 years.

double

Unfortunately, most laoban’s assets are in other people’s names…

Taiwanese limited liability companies always have a “responsible person” who can be held legally accountable for wrongdoing. This is quite unusual - corporate law in general cuts the directors an awful lot of slack. But I suspect in many cases the “responsible person” is the financial director, or someone other than the CEO, who takes the rap if needed.

I doubt it’ll even come to that, anyway. There will be the usual pitiful fines, a bit of grovelling, and the pigs will have their snouts right back at the trough.

[quote=“zender”]What’s the difference in price between cottonseed oil and olive oil? I bet it is substantial.
And they did this for seven years? That’s a long time. Maybe the punishment should equal the profit the company made over the last 7 years.[/quote]

The number I heard is it wholesales for 25 NTD/Kg, the estimated profits added up to something around 1 billion NTD.

[quote=“headhonchoII”][quote=“zender”]What’s the difference in price between cottonseed oil and olive oil? I bet it is substantial.
And they did this for seven years? That’s a long time. Maybe the punishment should equal the profit the company made over the last 7 years.[/quote]

The number I heard is it wholesales for 25 NTD/Kg, the estimated profits added up to something around 1 billion NTD.[/quote]

Which makes the 8 million fine so ludicrous.