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Government to send food safety task force to China

Premier Liu Chao-shiuan (劉兆玄) said yesterday the government would dispatch a special task force comprising doctors and food safety experts to China to gain a better understanding of China’s food safety mechanisms and the melamine scandal.

The Straits Exchange Foundation (SEF) would negotiate the matter with its Chinese counterpart, the Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait (ARATS), Liu told the legislature.

“The Department of Health will send a team of food safety experts and doctors to China to probe the tainted powdered milk incident and gather data to help the Cabinet deal with the crisis,” Liu said. “We will set up a better system of food safety inspection modeled on the US Food and Drug Administration.”

It was discovered earlier this month that 25 tonnes of tainted baby formula made by China’s Sanlu Group and an unknown quantity of tainted products from other Chinese dairies had been imported to Taiwan.

Over the weekend, tests also revealed that powdered non-dairy creamer imported by King Car Industrial Co (金車) from China contained melamine, prompting a massive recall of eight of the company’s products.

Health Minister Lin Fang-yue (林芳郁) told legislators yesterday that an improved mechanism to screen imports for toxic ingredients would be in place within six to 12 months.

Meanwhile, Liu also criticized the WHO yesterday for addressing Taiwan as “Taiwan, China” in its official reply to the government’s report to the organization on the tainted imports from China.

“We strongly protest the inappropriate way the WHO addressed the nation. The WHO should recognize our objection and call us by our national title, the Republic of China,” Liu said during a question-and-answer session with Democratic Progressive Party legislators William Lai (賴清德) and Yeh Yi-ching (葉宜津).

“Our stance has been consistent. We hope China will respect our independent sovereignty and stop belittling us,” Liu said.

Minister of Foreign Affairs Francisco Ou (歐鴻鍊) said the ministry had sent a telegram to the WHO yesterday morning to complain.

The government’s protest came after the Chinese-language Liberty Times (the Taipei Times’ sister newspaper) reported yesterday that the WHO had issued an official request for more information after Taipei reported last week that some of the products made by Taiwanese businesses with toxic Chinese milk powder had been exported to Hong Kong.

The story said the WHO addressed Taiwan as “Taiwan, China” in the document, which was sent by e-mail, and that the original was sent to China, while Taiwan was only carbon copied (CC).

The premier yesterday dismissed criticism from Lai and Yeh, who said the WHO’s e-mail was reflective of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) administration’s “diplomatic truce” with Beijing.

“As a member of the global community, reporting to the WHO is our responsibility. We will continue to do so, but we will never accept the inappropriate title used by the WHO to address us,” Liu said.

KMT Legislator Lin Yu-fang (林郁方), head of the legislature’s Foreign and National Defense Committee, said that although Taiwan could benefit from a truce with China on such matters, Taiwan should fight back when China belittles it in the international arena.

Ou yesterday confirmed that the health department had received the WHO’s e-mail on Monday, but declined to answer Lai on whether it was only a CC e-mail. However, a health department official told the Taipei Times yesterday that the e-mail from the WHO was the first time the agency had carbon copied an e-mail to Taiwan when Beijing and Taipei were both being informed about an issue.

ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY DPA AND JENNY W. HSU
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