SINGAPORE: The investigation into the mass food poisoning incident at the Singapore office of TikTok owner ByteDance has concluded, with catered food found to be the cause.
The Singapore Food Agency (SFA) said in a Facebook post on Friday (Nov 29) that the Jul 30 incident was “one of the more serious food poisoning cases in recent years” and it will “take appropriate enforcement actions against the responsible parties for food safety lapses”.
“Investigation findings have confirmed that catered food was the cause of the illnesses.”
The agency did not answer CNA’s queries on the type of enforcement actions that will be taken and who the responsible parties are.
SFA said it had proactively directed the caterers involved – Yun Hai Yao and Pu Tien Service – to implement measures such as setting aside and disposing of all prepared food once the gastroenteritis incident happened.
Health authorities suspended the food business operations of the two caterers, Yun Hai Yao at Northpoint City and Pu Tien Services at Senoko South Road, a day after the incident.
Yun Hai Yao runs the Yun Nans chain of restaurants, while Pu Tien Services is the central and catering kitchen of Putien.
SFA lifted the suspension of Pu Tien’s Senoko catering kitchen on Aug 10, and did the same for Yun Hai Yao at Northpoint City on Aug 16.
It added in the same Facebook post that both caterers had complied with the order to dispose of ready-to-eat food, thawed food and perishable food items.
Pu Tien, however, was allowed to retain some food items in its in-house inventory. SFA said the caterer had appealed to them to exempt those food items from disposal.
This was permitted after the agency conducted further testing and “did not uncover any food safety concerns” through those tests.