In response to the inferior oil incident, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has implemented the Executive Yuan’s reinforcement measures for food safety at once: 

Aggravate criminal liability and fine: The FDA has planned to amend the law to aggravate penalties, and the procedures for amendment of the law will be launched as soon as possible to solve the problem of repeated penalties for one criminal act. Prompt administrative sanction can be carried out, and the amount of fine can be greatly enhanced. Both penalty and fine are enhanced to stop offenders counting on luck. 

Increase reward for reporting an offence: A letter was sent to various county/city public health bureaus on September 16, 2014 to make an overall evaluation on the hazard caused by current food safety incidents on the public. Reward for reporting an incident is to be increased. Moreover, in view of the major food safety incidents recently, studies were conducted on amending the Regulation Governing Rewards for Reporting of Food Sanitation Offenses to increase the reward for reporting major cases. This is to encourage citizens to report illegal acts. Also, reward for business employees who report an offence will be multiplied. The reporting hotline, reporting reward system, and so on will also be publicized continually and through appropriate channels or related activities, in order to achieve the objective of encouraging reporting. 

Central government reporting hotline: A central government reporting hotline is established: 02-27878200. When a report is received, the Procedures for Handling Petitions and Reports of the Public will be followed and the relevant paperwork will be completed; a designated person will be in place to keep and manage the documentation records. 

Diversion control of oils: Enact diversion management on domestic oil producers; all food producers or food processing manufacturers shall not use forage oil or industrial oil, and offenders will be subject to serious penalty. An imported oil and fat diversion policy is established, which requires the intended use of imported products be stated in the import declaration form, in order to strengthen border control. Furthermore, compounded import regulations are laid down to reinforce management of imported oil and fat products. 

Management of waste oil recycling: According to the Good Hygiene Practices for food formulated pursuant to the Act Governing Food Safety and Sanitation, as a management benchmark for the food industry, businesses should remove and deal with the wastes in accordance with the Waste Disposal Act and the provisions of relevant laws and regulations formulated by the Environmental Protection Administration of the Executive Yuan. 

Put the three-stage quality control (QC) into practice: From October 31, 2014 onwards, cooking oil manufacturers are put under the mandatory self-examination system. Furthermore, manufacturers of daily goods (starch, flour, sugar, salt, soybean, wheat, corn) will also be put under the system (Stage 1 QC) at high priority. Regulations Governing the Hygiene and Safety Management and Verification and Commissioned Verification for Food Industry will be promulgated soon, with the subcategories of food industries for which third-party verification is required to be announced sooner or later. Starting from January 1, 2015, cooking oil and fat manufacturers will be required to receive mandatory third-party hygiene and safety verification (Stage 2 QC). A “food and drug inspection task force” is to be established with a goal of completely eradicating dark-minded and illegal businesses. Through the cooperation of central and local authorities, inspection capacity can be powered up, and hence comprehensive inspection and verification from the production origin or the producing plant can be reinforced (Stage 3 QC). 

Tracking and tracing of food: Cooking oil and fat manufacturers and importers will be put under the food track and trace system to be implemented on October 31, 2014. Manufacturers of daily goods (starch, flour, sugar, salt, soybean, wheat, corn) will also be put under the system in the next stage of implementation scheduled in July 2015. In addition, designated business operators will be announced for mandatory use of electronic invoice in order to facilitate the tracking and tracing of food and auditing management.