The UN is a major platform for modern nations to meet and interact with one another, and its main goal is to maintain and advance the most appropriate world order for the international community. The UN deals with a very broad range of topics, and issues related to human survival and development have become largely inseparable from the UN and its associated international agencies.
In the current debate over whether to allow imports of US beef with traces of the leanness-enhancing agent ractopamine, Taiwan would do well to refer to the way the Codex Alimentarius Commission is assessing standards for the drug.
Most people in Taiwan are not familiar with the Codex Alimentarius Commission. The commission was established by the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization and the WHO in 1963 to ensure consumers’ access to safe and good-quality food.
Alongside the rapid development of food technology, the commission has been able to put together a collection of internationally recognized standards, codes of practice, guidelines and other recommendations relating to food, food production and food safety.
This collection of standards is called the Codex Alimentarius, which is Latin for “Book of Food.” It is the most reliable and comprehensive reference for international food policies and food administration standards.
Aside from influencing consumer behavior throughout the world, the Codex Alimentarius provides standards for food manufacturers and processors to follow. It has helped reduce tariff and trade obstacles, thus promoting international trade in food products.
The commission provides its 185 member states (including the EU) and 208 observers with opportunities to discuss and formulate global food safety standards. The Codex system is a major platform for its members to set specific food standards for the international community.
The Codex Alimentarius Commission will hold its 35th session in Rome from Monday to Saturday next week, bringing together academics and experts from around the world, as well as its members and observers, and one of the items that they will discuss is standards for permitted residues of ractopamine.
Hopefully, whatever conclusion the meeting arrives at should help to bring about a consensus in Taiwan and resolve the national debate over whether to allow imports of US beef containing ractopamine residue.
The Codex Alimentarius Commission emphasizes that every person should be able to consume safe, good-quality food. Its purpose is not just to ensure that people can eat their fill, but also to protect everyone’s health rights.
As a member of the global village, Taiwan ought to be part of this important process of establishing international food safety standards, just like other countries.
However, Taiwan unfortunately is not a member state of the UN, so our government does not have the right to participate in the Codex Alimentarius Commission process or to obtain food-safety data directly from the commission. As a result, Taiwan has not been able to keep its food safety standards fully in line with those of the international community.
We must recognize that as long as Taiwan is not a UN member state, Taiwanese will not be able to enjoy the rights and benefits to which they are entitled.
Taiwan’s efforts to become a UN member are a matter not just of politics, but also of Taiwanese people’s quality of life.
Chen Lung-chu is chairman of the Taiwan New Century Foundation.
Translated by Kyle Jeffcoat
Because much of what former US president Donald Trump says is unhinged and histrionic, it is tempting to dismiss all of it as bunk. Yet the potential future president has a populist knack for sounding alarums that resonate with the zeitgeist — for example, with growing anxiety about World War III and nuclear Armageddon. “We’re a failing nation,” Trump ranted during his US presidential debate against US Vice President Kamala Harris in one particularly meandering answer (the one that also recycled urban myths about immigrants eating cats). “And what, what’s going on here, you’re going to end up in World War
Earlier this month in Newsweek, President William Lai (賴清德) challenged the People’s Republic of China (PRC) to retake the territories lost to Russia in the 19th century rather than invade Taiwan. He stated: “If it is for the sake of territorial integrity, why doesn’t [the PRC] take back the lands occupied by Russia that were signed over in the treaty of Aigun?” This was a brilliant political move to finally state openly what many Chinese in both China and Taiwan have long been thinking about the lost territories in the Russian far east: The Russian far east should be “theirs.” Granted, Lai issued
On Tuesday, President William Lai (賴清德) met with a delegation from the Hoover Institution, a think tank based at Stanford University in California, to discuss strengthening US-Taiwan relations and enhancing peace and stability in the region. The delegation was led by James Ellis Jr, co-chair of the institution’s Taiwan in the Indo-Pacific Region project and former commander of the US Strategic Command. It also included former Australian minister for foreign affairs Marise Payne, influential US academics and other former policymakers. Think tank diplomacy is an important component of Taiwan’s efforts to maintain high-level dialogue with other nations with which it does
On Sept. 2, Elbridge Colby, former deputy assistant secretary of defense for strategy and force development, wrote an article for the Wall Street Journal called “The US and Taiwan Must Change Course” that defends his position that the US and Taiwan are not doing enough to deter the People’s Republic of China (PRC) from taking Taiwan. Colby is correct, of course: the US and Taiwan need to do a lot more or the PRC will invade Taiwan like Russia did against Ukraine. The US and Taiwan have failed to prepare properly to deter war. The blame must fall on politicians and policymakers