News that the toxic chemical melamine was discovered in yet another food product imported from China, although shocking, should come as no surprise to consumers, given that country’s track record on food safety.
In light of this latest scare, in which imports of ammonium bicarbonate — a leavening agent used in cookies and pastries — were found to contain worryingly high levels of the industrial chemical, health authorities should take quick and effective action.
Instead of asking which other products may be contaminated, health authorities should be asking which products aren’t affected and how many other dangerous industrial chemicals in foodstuffs imported across the Taiwan Strait are being unwittingly consumed by shoppers.
A chemical industry report by Dutch company DSM states that China is one of the world’s largest producers and the world’s biggest exporter of melamine. There is a serious surplus of the chemical in China, the report notes, so it should come as no surprise that unscrupulous food manufacturers — of which there are obviously many — are coming up with innovative ways to use it.
The Chinese government clearly has little or no control over domestic food safety standards and cannot guarantee the safety of products its manufacturers export overseas.
It is therefore up to the Department of Health to guarantee the safety of imported foods from Chinese manufacturers. If it cannot do so, then all such imports from China should be banned regardless of the cost to local companies. Public health must be the first priority.
The government’s reaction to the tainted-milk scandal was woefully inadequate, but this was partly dictated by its new, low-key approach to the cross-strait relationship.
Hamstrung by its desire to curry favor with Beijing and its policy of denying Taiwanese statehood, it has been afraid to criticize China outright. Instead it has resorted to shady company-to–company dealings at the behest of Beijing, while holding meaningless international conferences to set non-binding and effectively useless “action levels” on safe quantities of melamine in food.
Speaking on the melamine scandal, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao (溫家寶) recently said “it is absolutely impermissible to sacrifice people’s lives and health in exchange for temporary economic development.”
It comes to something when it is the Chinese premier, rather than the Taiwanese president, who says what people here have been waiting to hear: that companies should not put profits before people. But then five months in, this is what people have come to expect from our increasingly fumbling and unpopular administration.
Baking industry sources have said that health authorities knew about this latest scandal for several days before releasing the information. If this is true, this means the new administration has already lowered itself to the level of the Chinese communists, notorious for holding back news of health scandals.
The government has been in the news recently over its apparent attempts to limit the Central News Agency’s negative reports about China.
Any process that involves a democratically elected government holding back crucial information at the expense of its own people is a sign that the authorities are in dire trouble and need to rethink their priorities.
There is much evidence that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is sending soldiers from the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) to support Russia’s invasion of Ukraine — and is learning lessons for a future war against Taiwan. Until now, the CCP has claimed that they have not sent PLA personnel to support Russian aggression. On 18 April, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelinskiy announced that the CCP is supplying war supplies such as gunpowder, artillery, and weapons subcomponents to Russia. When Zelinskiy announced on 9 April that the Ukrainian Army had captured two Chinese nationals fighting with Russians on the front line with details
On a quiet lane in Taipei’s central Daan District (大安), an otherwise unremarkable high-rise is marked by a police guard and a tawdry A4 printout from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs indicating an “embassy area.” Keen observers would see the emblem of the Holy See, one of Taiwan’s 12 so-called “diplomatic allies.” Unlike Taipei’s other embassies and quasi-consulates, no national flag flies there, nor is there a plaque indicating what country’s embassy this is. Visitors hoping to sign a condolence book for the late Pope Francis would instead have to visit the Italian Trade Office, adjacent to Taipei 101. The death of
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), joined by the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP), held a protest on Saturday on Ketagalan Boulevard in Taipei. They were essentially standing for the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), which is anxious about the mass recall campaign against KMT legislators. President William Lai (賴清德) said that if the opposition parties truly wanted to fight dictatorship, they should do so in Tiananmen Square — and at the very least, refrain from groveling to Chinese officials during their visits to China, alluding to meetings between KMT members and Chinese authorities. Now that China has been defined as a foreign hostile force,
On April 19, former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) gave a public speech, his first in about 17 years. During the address at the Ketagalan Institute in Taipei, Chen’s words were vague and his tone was sour. He said that democracy should not be used as an echo chamber for a single politician, that people must be tolerant of other views, that the president should not act as a dictator and that the judiciary should not get involved in politics. He then went on to say that others with different opinions should not be criticized as “XX fellow travelers,” in reference to
RSS