Correction

Looking back through the TT archives late tonight, I found this interesting piece buried away from the light of the headlines as a relatively minor "Taiwan News" section item:

"The nation’s latest food scare... was exposed thanks to the perseverance of one food safety inspector... The 52-year-old FDA inspector, a mother of two surnamed Yang (楊), became suspicious in March during a routine check of beverages for banned chemicals..."

That at least seems to answer one question.

Update:

Incidentally, it seems the FDA's server may be having load problems - I'm trying to look for inspection numbers but I can't get any some of their links to work. I did however, download a pdf listing "accredited food labs" in Taiwan which contains contact info, addresses and lists of what food items each lab is accredited to conduct tests on. There are four labs in both Tainan and Kaohsiung, some of them run by the very largest food companies (e.g. Uni-President in Tainan) with others being run by the Universities (especially Cheng Kung in Tainan). Does the FDA outsource its testing inspections, or merely carry them out at these labs?

Interestingly, of the eighty laws and regulations the FDA has to govern food safety in Taiwan, the section on "Scope and Application Standards of Food Additives - Emulsifiers" has a date attached to it of 2nd December 2009. Was this the date on which a law was passed, or does this date refer to something else?