I have long feared the day would come when US pork injected with leanness-inducing additives would be allowed into Taiwan.
In 2012, the Codex Alimentarius Commission — established in 1963 to protect the health of consumers, ensure fair practices in the global food trade and promote coordination of all food standards work undertaken by international governmental and non-governmental organizations — set the permitted limits for residue amounts of ractopamine, a leanness inducing chemical. For pork and beef products, this limit was set at 10 parts per billion (ppb) for meat and fat, 40ppb in liver and 90ppb in kidneys.
These standards were a long time in coming: The commission spent many years debating the correct levels, and it took several votes before they were successfully passed with 69 votes for and 67 against. According to a European Food Safety Authority report issued then, leanness-inducing chemicals can affect people with cardiovascular disease, and given the lack of current studies on ethnic groups, or on sufficiently large sample sizes, there is inadequate scientific evidence that these additives have no adverse health effects.
Three years have passed, and still many countries — including major livestock producing countries such as China, Russia and all the EU member states — are reluctant to accept the adoption of these international standards. That is, the use of this additive is actually banned in about 70 percent of the swine raised for global consumption. Its use is permitted in the US, but is it used in all beef and pork livestock in the US? Of course not.
It is not used in US beef and pork products bound for the EU, and neither is it allowed to be present as residue in pork products exported to Taiwan. Are there leanness-inducing chemical residues in the pork and beef products Americans eat? Again, of course not. US consumers can select additive-free pork products in their supermarkets.
About 20 years ago, these additives were used in pig rearing in Taiwan. While the pigs were much leaner, they did exhibit some adverse effects in the rearing process, manifested in some unusual sitting postures. Something was evidently wrong with the animals, and they would occasionally keel over when at auction. This was extremely embarrassing in Taiwan, a country that prides itself on its animal husbandry. So does this mean that now we will be using leanness-inducing additives, even though they were banned some time ago? Heaven only knows whether the authorities have laid out any requirements, because the public certainly has not been privy to any.
More adventurous countries might want to permit the use of additives such as ractopamine in the spirit of democratic freedom, but what are the repercussions for smaller economies that, under the political realities of international trade, are reliant on other countries? Does it mean that they have to allow certain products to clear customs, only to subject them to strict controls once in the country? Which way will Taiwan go? Will it just do what it did with the import of US beef, and announce that there are no health concerns?
There are those who say that allowing the import of US pork with leanness-inducing additives is simply a necessary evil to facilitate international alignment. Is Taiwan required to swallow a necessary evil for the sake of international alignment? Or should it choose a necessary good for the sake of caution when it comes to health? Or is there another option? One that will be able to simultaneously address the economic aspect, as well as the health of Taiwanese?
Chou Chin-cheng is the dean of the School of Veterinary Medicine at National Taiwan University.
Translated by Paul Cooper
Saudi Arabian largesse is flooding Egypt’s cultural scene, but the reception is mixed. Some welcome new “cooperation” between two regional powerhouses, while others fear a hostile takeover by Riyadh. In Cairo, historically the cultural capital of the Arab world, Egyptian Minister of Culture Nevine al-Kilany recently hosted Saudi Arabian General Entertainment Authority chairman Turki al-Sheikh. The deep-pocketed al-Sheikh has emerged as a Medici-like patron for Egypt’s cultural elite, courted by Cairo’s top talent to produce a slew of forthcoming films. A new three-way agreement between al-Sheikh, Kilany and United Media Services — a multi-media conglomerate linked to state intelligence that owns much of
The US and other countries should take concrete steps to confront the threats from Beijing to avoid war, US Representative Mario Diaz-Balart said in an interview with Voice of America on March 13. The US should use “every diplomatic economic tool at our disposal to treat China as what it is... to avoid war,” Diaz-Balart said. Giving an example of what the US could do, he said that it has to be more aggressive in its military sales to Taiwan. Actions by cross-party US lawmakers in the past few years such as meeting with Taiwanese officials in Washington and Taipei, and
The Republic of China (ROC) on Taiwan has no official diplomatic allies in the EU. With the exception of the Vatican, it has no official allies in Europe at all. This does not prevent the ROC — Taiwan — from having close relations with EU member states and other European countries. The exact nature of the relationship does bear revisiting, if only to clarify what is a very complicated and sensitive idea, the details of which leave considerable room for misunderstanding, misrepresentation and disagreement. Only this week, President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) received members of the European Parliament’s Delegation for Relations
Denmark’s “one China” policy more and more resembles Beijing’s “one China” principle. At least, this is how things appear. In recent interactions with the Danish state, such as applying for residency permits, a Taiwanese’s nationality would be listed as “China.” That designation occurs for a Taiwanese student coming to Denmark or a Danish citizen arriving in Denmark with, for example, their Taiwanese partner. Details of this were published on Sunday in an article in the Danish daily Berlingske written by Alexander Sjoberg and Tobias Reinwald. The pretext for this new practice is that Denmark does not recognize Taiwan as a state under