Four months after 169 staff suffered severe food poisoning at the ByteDance office in One Raffles Quay, the Singapore Food Agency (SFA) confirmed that it was due to catered food.
In a Facebook post on Friday (29 Nov), SFA vowed to take enforcement actions against those responsible.
Source: 8world News on Facebook
SFA described the ByteDance incident as “one of the more serious food poisoning cases in recent years”.
Investigations have concluded, it said, and findings showed that catered food was the cause of the illnesses.
ByteDance had reportedly said its staff had fallen ill after a “recent visit to the L26 canteen”, which engages licensed external vendors to cater Chinese food for its offices.
Two of its caterers were Pu Tien Services and Yun Hai Yao at Northpoint City.
Yun Hai Yao at Northpoint City (left) and Pu Tien Services’ catering kitchen in Senoko. Source: Google Maps and Google Maps
At the onset of the incident, SFA instructed both caterers to implement various measures as a precaution to prevent the disease from possibly spreading.
This included throwing away all ready-to-eat food, thawed food and perishable food items.
Both caterers complied with the order, though Pu Tien asked to exempt some food items from its in-house inventory.
SFA allowed this appeal as it conducted further tests and “did not uncover any food safety concerns”.
Nevertheless, both caterers were still suspended from 31 July till further notice.
Pu Tien said in a statement later that samples from the food it delivered to ByteDance were sent for independent testing, which confirmed that met SFA food safety regulations. The results also confirmed that bacteria known to cause food poisoning was not detected.
Yun Hai Yao told Lianhe Zaobao that its Northpoint City branch had been supplying food to ByteDance for about a month without problems. Their employees had also eaten the same food at noon on the day of the incident without feeling any discomfort.
Pu Tien’s suspension was lifted on 10 Aug, while Yun Hai Yao’s was lifted on 16 Aug.
SFA did not mention who the responsible parties were, saying only that it would take “appropriate enforcement actions” against them for food safety lapses.
169 people in total were affected by food poisoning, it added, 17 of whom were hospitalised.
All of them had consumed food supplied by the two caterers.
Also read: 37 suffer food poisoning at St Luke’s ElderCare centres in May 2023, caterer fined S$2,100
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Featured image adapted from 8world News on Facebook.
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