The Taipei City government has fined and suspended a contractor that provides school lunches to the city's Lixing Elementary School over an incident in which students were accidentally served "kitchen waste."

The incident came to light on Monday, after former Hon Hai Precision Industry Co. spokesperson Laura Liu (???) wrote on social media that the school had notified her that her daughter's class had mistakenly been served "last week's kitchen waste" that day at lunch.

Fortunately, she said, her daughter had noticed the stench of the "soup" and refused to eat it.

The school, for its part, later acknowledged that there had been "gross negligence" in the contractor's food delivery procedures, but maintained that the mix-up involved "expired soup" accidentally being mixed in with that day's soup course.

On Tuesday, the Taipei Department of Education issued a statement confirming that the unnamed contractor's "negligence" had led to two students at the school accidentally consuming "kitchen waste."

In response to the incident, the department said it had decided to fine the contractor NT$26,000 (US$845) -- the maximum allowed under its contract with the city -- and to suspend its services for a period of two weeks.

The contractor will also have to submit a report on how it plans to prevent such errors in the future, and will only be allowed to resume its services with the approval of the department's school lunch committee, according to the statement.

If the company fails to make required improvements, it will be seen as grounds for immediately terminating the contract, the department added.

Source: Focus Taiwan News Channel