The first trial of the Baolin Teahouse poisoning case is out! The Beijing Municipal Health Bureau should do one less thing to make hospital inspections troublesome

The 2024 Baolin Tea House mass poisoning case resulted in 6 deaths and 24 injuries. After investigation, the prosecutors indicted the person in charge, Li Fangxuan, and other 5 people on charges of negligent death. The Taipei District Court issued a verdict today after a trial of 1 year and 10 months; looking back on this case, Taipei The case that Mayor Jiang Wanan proudly brought up at the TV debate revealed that after the Bei City Health Bureau came to the scene for an inspection, the ingredients were not immediately sampled and the subsequent ingredients were discarded by the chef, causing the hospital inspection to be very troublesome during the trial and investigation process.

On March 19, 2024, when the incident occurred, Po Lam Tea House used cross-contaminated Kuay Teow to prepare dishes, and people began to suffer from food poisoning. As of March 24, a total of 33 people were injured and 6 people died. During this period, Po Lam Tea House used the same batch of cross-contaminated Kueh Teow for cooking.

What is regrettable is that the Peking City Health Bureau inspected the Baolin Tea House before March 24, but only sampled the chef's hands, chopping boards and other environmental tests but did not sample the on-site ingredients. Afterwards, because of this, they passed by the "Key Kuey Teow" lying in the corner and full of Bangkok Sour. This batch of Kuey Teow was also discarded by the chef that night.

Unexpectedly, this also caused the prosecutors to be unable to find the source of bunkeric acid when investigating the case. Fortunately, bunkerlic acid was finally detected on Hu Qingfu's hands, which was consistent with the poison found in the victim's body. Five people in total, Li Fangxuan, the person in charge of Baolin Teahouse, Wang Shunde, Hu Qingfu, Sunday Hao, and intern intern surnamed Ruan were prosecuted for violating the food safety law, negligent death, and negligent injury.

However, after the case entered the trial stage, the "key kueh teow" once again caused headaches for the two parties. In order to clarify the cause of the production of bunkeric acid, the defense claimed that the prosecutor did not clearly explain the cause of the production of bunkerlic acid when prosecuting, so it requested identification and hoped to clarify the truth through bacterial culture experiments.

After deliberation by the collegial court, the team of Dr. Lin Huanyu of the Biological Resources Preservation and Research Center of the Institute of Food Industry Development was entrusted to conduct a bacterial culture experiment; the experiment was divided into 5 groups of samples. The first group was simple kway teow, the second group was kway teow kneaded in a clean plastic bag, and the third group was directly put into the kueh teow with the Gladiolus Burkella coconut virus pathogenic bacteria that produces bunkeric acid.

As for the most critical groups 4 and 5, the plastic bags that had been in contact with group 3 were touched to the samples of groups 4 and 5 respectively, and the 4th group was placed in refrigerated storage, and the 5th group was stored in a room temperature environment to simulate the contamination of the rice noodles. In the end, the samples that produced the most bunklitic acid were groups 3 and 5, which also reflected that the refrigerated environment can significantly suppress the amount of bunklitic acid.

For the sake of caution, this case also summoned Taipei Veterans General Hospital physician Yang Zhenchang and Food and Drug Administration Director Jiang Zhigang to appear in court for cross-examination.

Yang Zhenchang believed that the upstream manufacturers used vacuum and sealed packaging during the transportation of the ingredients, and there was no contamination after being transported to other branches. He believed that the Kuay Teow should have been contaminated after being sent to the A13 store. Secondly, based on the experimental results, it can also be determined that even if there is a prototype strain of Gladiolus Burkholderia coconut virus on the Kuay Teow, there must be a suitable environment to produce bunkeric acid. He emphasized that the failure to put the ingredients in refrigeration in this case should be the key reason for the production of toxins.

Jiang Zhigang said that according to the principles of good food hygiene practices, food ingredients should be stored under their storage conditions. He also believed that if the food ingredients in this case had been refrigerated, subsequent toxin production should be avoided, and this case would not have occurred.