Dr. Chiang Shou-shan’s warehouse occupies a nondescript storefront on Bali’s Zhong­hua Road. Home to a dozen-odd specialized cold-storage units, it is his freezing and distribution center. Entering through an insulating screen, we see six or seven workers in parkas filling orders with items pulled from Styrofoam boxes. Each worker checks that the order in hand is correct, seals the package, affixes a label, then moves it into a freezer to await delivery.

“The freezers are set to –20, –30, or –40° Celsius,” explains company vice general manager Wang Hua­jui. “We assign products to them based on the most appropriate temperature for that item.” Wang, who oversees the NT$10-million warehouse, says it is the most advanced cold-storage facility in Taiwan.

Chiang has built a complete “cold chain” to keep his seafood fresh. Fish farmers select samples from each of their pools, and harvest their fish only after they have passed a first round of testing. The freshly harvested fish are sent immediately to a processing facility for slaughter, then are quickly frozen, vacuum packed, and delivered to the Bali warehouse, where samples are taken for more testing. Only fish that pass this second round of testing are delivered to shops and customers.

Food temperatures are checked constantly, whether in the freezers or while out for delivery. If they rise above –10°C at any point, the food is thrown away. “Temperature is the key to the fish’s freshness,” explains Chiang. “If it goes above the proper temperature, the cells begin losing fluid and nutritional value.”

The company also keeps close tabs on temperature when products are in transit. “We’re the only company besides McDonald’s to monitor product temperature all the way to our customers’ doors,” says Chiang. Temperature tags placed in the trucks ensure that items don’t warm en route. The tags record the temperature every two seconds, and the logs are checked when the trucks return to the warehouse. If any items are found to have “overheated” on the road, the company recalls them.

Dr. Chiang’s business utilizes stringent testing and custom-built freezers to ensure that all its food products are fresh and toxin-free.

The company is equally serious about its adherence to another of its core values: testing for contaminants.

Chiang says his company requires producers to test their products for 200–500 pollutants before shipping, a process that usually takes seven to eight days. Testing regimens differ from product to product. Wild-caught fish must be checked for six heavy metals and 79 environmental hormones (e.g. dioxins and PCBs). Farm-raised fish and shrimp are tested for all these, residual antibiotics, and 350 other contaminants. Because cattle, pigs, or chickens may have been treated with hormones and drugs to promote leanness, their meat is also tested for 33 further substances.

In all, products are tested for 594 contaminants, a far more stringent standard than even those employed in Japan and Europe. And the company’s maximum acceptable levels for residual pesticides and veterinary drugs are set at one part per 10 billion, a criterion that is hundreds of thousands of times more stringent than the typical standard.

“One of the things that distinguishes our products is that we test each batch before it reaches the market,” says Chiang. “Most other products, whether in Taiwan or elsewhere, are only tested by random sampling after having reached the market. By the time anyone knows of a problem with these products, they’ve already been consumed.” He explains that his company’s testing works by testing a sample fish or shrimp from each aquaculture pool. Because drugs are administered to these fish through their water and food, if one tests positive for residual antibiotics, all will have them. In the case of wild-caught fish, one fish of each included species is sampled from every catch.

Each item that passes the testing receives a product identification label showing the location where it was produced, its producer, the feeding method, and the fact that it has passed testing and inspection.

The problem is that there just aren’t that many farmers, fishermen, and aquaculturists whose products can pass such stringent testing.

“Only 5% of farmers using conventional farming methods are capable of passing our tests,” says Chiang. They therefore sign producers to contracts requiring the latter to eschew cultivation with chemicals. In return, Chiang’s company guarantees to buy their goods at a 40% premium over market price.

But Chiang encountered numerous problems in the early days of his business. Aquaculturalists usually rejected his offer because they felt that the 40% premium wasn’t sufficient to offset the lower pool populations and risk of losing entire pools to disease that avoiding the use of chemicals would entail. In his first year in business, he canvassed Taiwan looking for fish, but found few people willing to work with him, only Dr. Hong Qing­guo, who was raising organic net-caged cobia off Little Liu­qiu Island, and a few net fishermen who agreed not to douse their catch in formalin.

“Later, producers began to realize they would lose their businesses if they didn’t change their practices,” recalls Chiang. Taiwan’s WTO entry in 2002 forced its aquaculturalists to compete with mainland Chinese producers. Given that local producers face higher land, labor, and feed costs, “toxin free” has become an important way to differentiate their products. After years of hard work and encouraging fish farmers to try out new methods, Chiang’s company now has contracts with 40 or 50 producers.

With healthy eating becoming more mainstream, Chiang is careful to point out that “organic” does not equal “toxin free.”

He explains that 15% of the organic products on the market contain traces of conventional agricultural chemicals and that even foods found to be free of such residues may contain banned chemicals smuggled into Taiwan and applied to crops. Since the latter are not part of the domestic testing regimen, they can go undetected.

In addition, organic products may have been exposed to contaminants that the farmer doesn’t know about. For example, a feed company may treat fish food with preservatives to prevent mold, and these may be retained in the fish. In one instance, Chiang’s company discovered agricultural chemicals in slender sprat produced by one of its contract suppliers. The baffled producer investigated and discovered that his son had sprayed weeds around his pools with defoliants for fear that the snakes and rats living in them would eat some of their fish. These defoliants had then leached into the pools and contaminated the fry.

Given how stringently Chiang tests his products, it’s no wonder they aren’t cheap. His wild fish sell for about twice market price, his farm-raised fish and shrimp for four to five times market price, and his beef, pork, and chicken for anywhere from two to five times market price.

In spite of his high prices, Chiang’s business has been largely unscathed by the economic downturn and has continued to open new outlets. Since moving to a franchise model in 2009, 33 new stores have opened and sales have grown by 10% per month. As of late February 2012, he had another 25 potential franchisees ready to send through his training and selection process.

Zheng Zi­yan, the proprietress of the Ping­zhen shop located near ­Zhongli’s train station, is a former pediatric nurse who couldn’t bear to see any more children tormented by pain and disease. When Chiang began making franchises available in 2009, she encouraged her husband, whose business was struggling, to take the plunge.

Largely unknown to the public, dealing in expensive products, and faced with consumers who thought that the only way to get fresh-tasting fish was to buy it live, their shop struggled for its first seven or eight months in business.

But they kept at it. They befriended customers and gave out information about healthy eating. They encouraged people to sample their high quality flash-frozen fish to see for themselves that it tasted as good as fresh. When dealing with customers who didn’t know how to prepare particular items, Zheng shared recipes and even cooked their food for them at no charge. The hard work eventually paid off as their client base, which originally consisted largely of people suffering medical conditions, grew to include teachers and ordinary families.

After two years in business, sales at their Ping­zhen shop have grown from a hundred-odd thousand NT dollars per month to more than NT$1.2 million, their client base has increased to 300, and profit margins have risen to 20–30%. Though they haven’t yet recouped the cost of opening this first shop, they’ve already contracted with Chiang to open a second in Zhu­bei.

Chiang is expanding as well, with plans to move into toxin-free fruits and vegetables.

He has developed a “live vegetable” technique that involves removing plants with their roots to ensure that they stay fresh while being tested for 350 contaminants. Freshly harvested plants are sent to stores where they are placed in specially designed “living vegetable devices” that provide them with light, water and nutrients while samples from the crop undergo testing. The plants are also sprayed with a solution that reduces residual nitrates, resolving what has proved to be a thorny issue for organic agriculture. Chiang has taken out a patent on this new business model (including the equipment), and has already introduced it to the market.

Generally speaking, people like to know where their food comes from. Chiang has provided them with that information, while also seeding Taiwan with the notion that consumers should be willing to invest in good health. His newest venture seems likely to open new vistas in organic foods.