If there is one thing that can drag the director of the American Institute in Taiwan (AIT) out of his Xinyi Road office and into the media spotlight, it is this: stumping for the US beef industry.
In recent years this has become a more pressing task, because for some years the Taiwanese government has had a ban in place on certain categories of US beef after isolated reports of mad cow disease emerged in the US.
The beef industry in the US is big business, so big in fact that Congress is willing to fork out indecently large amounts of taxpayer dollars to subsidize an industry with more political clout than economic merit. Those who aren’t US beef farmers or politicians indebted to the beef lobby have little sympathy for an industry that has come to represent a lot of what is wrong with selective government assistance in the face of environmental degradation.
That said, there is no valid reason for the Taiwanese government to extend its ban on US beef. AIT Director Stephen Young was absolutely correct yesterday when he urged the government — and by extension, the Taiwanese consumer — to “focus on the science and not the politics.”
The hesitancy of the government to lift the ban poses an intriguing problem: What does it have to fear when its own health authorities admit that the risk of contracting mad cow disease is extremely remote?
Department of Health Minister Yeh Ching-chuan (葉金川), in what can only politely be described as a rationalization, said on Wednesday that there was still considerable public concern over the safety of US beef. What he did not add was that the government is responsible for informing the public on what is genuinely unsafe, allowing all other products onto the market and then letting the consumer decide.
It seems bizarre, but Yeh — a health official, no less — seems to think that ignorance and misleading language deserve his respect.
Political anxiety over US beef imports cannot be separated from the extraordinary displays of anger in South Korea against US beef, and the government possibly thinks it is easier to neutralize the hobby-horse of a few unctuous Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) politicians by closing down the debate rather than giving beef importers their due.
The problem for the DPP is that the beef debate is only wounding the party as it strives for greater credibility among voters.
DPP Legislator Wang Sing-nan (王幸男) is at the forefront of this malign process. Wang’s claim that reintroducing US beef to the Taiwanese market would threaten the well-being of his constituents is poppycock. Sadly for his party, the fact that Wang is tapping into the same blinkered neuroticism that so unnerved South Korea’s leaders does nothing less than undermine the credibility of his leader, DPP Chairperson Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文).
The fact that Wang was elected to the legislature as a legislator-at-large (based on the proportion of votes a party receives) rather than as a local representative makes his outbursts all the more damaging for Tsai, who clearly must learn to rein in such indiscipline.
Whatever the merits of the US beef industry, senseless bans on US products do nothing to help Taiwan-US ties. But opportunist attacks from a political party struggling to regain electoral credibility are more noteworthy: There is nothing to gain for the DPP by nailing its colors to the mast on such a ridiculous issue — and, once again, encouraging skeptics to argue that the party is too parochial, mischievous and inept to be entrusted with a popular mandate.
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