Sixteen civic groups took to the streets of Taipei yesterday to demand the resignation of Premier Sean Chen (陳冲) over the Cabinet’s decision to push for a conditional lifting of a ban on imports of US beef containing a controversial feed additive.
About 70 members from the groups rallied in front of the Control Yuan before marching to the Executive Yuan, where they demanded Chen’s resignation over what they described as the government’s “hasty” decision to lift the ban on US beef containing residues of the leanness-enhancing drug ractopamine.
While the government says “there are no reports that show ractopamine is unsafe, neither are there reports that show it is [safe],” Homemakers United Foundation president Chen Man-li (陳曼麗) said.
Photo: Sam Yeh, AFP
She accused the government of only citing figures that favor its decision, while ignoring the fact that there are no reports that guarantee the safety of the drug.
“It was a very hasty decision made without thorough discussion and evaluation,” Chen said.
“The meeting held by the Council of Agriculture was a sham,” she said, referring to the council’s third interministerial meeting on ractopamine, which failed to deliver a clear statement on the drug’s safety.
The groups demanded that the premier step down and that the government ban all imports of products containing traces of ractopamine. The legislature should pass a law before March 20 to ban imports of such products, they added.
If the premier did not step down by the end of this month, the groups would launch a large-scale protest on April 1, said Ho Tsung-hsun (何宗勳), a representative of the Life Conservationist Association.
More than 100 civic groups will hold demonstrations around the country from next week, Ho added.
The Cabinet said on Monday evening that it was leaning toward allowing imports of US beef containing ractopamine residues as long as four principles were followed: there was a safe level of ractopamine in beef; the permits for importing beef and pork were kept separate; imported beef was clearly labeled and the import of internal organs was banned.
The Republic of China Swine Association said on Tuesday that more than 8,000 pig farmers would take part in a rally in Taipei today to protest against the import of US beef containing ractopamine.
The Ministry of Transportation and Communications yesterday inaugurated the Danjiang Bridge across the Tamsui River in New Taipei City, saying that the structure would be an architectural icon and traffic artery for Taiwan. Feted as a major engineering achievement, the Danjiang Bridge is 920m long, 211m tall at the top of its pylon, and is the longest single-pylon asymmetric cable-stayed bridge in the world, the government’s Web site for the structure said. It was designed by late Iraqi-British architect Zaha Hadid. The structure, with a maximum deck of 70m, accommodates road and light rail traffic, and affords a 200m navigation channel for boats,
PRECISION STRIKES: The most significant reason to deploy HIMARS to outlying islands is to establish a ‘dead zone’ that the PLA would not dare enter, a source said A High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) would be deployed to Penghu County and Dongyin Island (東引) in Lienchiang County (Matsu) to force the Chinese military to retreat at least 100km from the coastline, a military source said yesterday. Taiwan has been procuring HIMARS and Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS) from the US in batches. Once all batches have been delivered, Taiwan would possess 111 HIMARS units and 504 ATACMS, which have a range of 300km. Considering that “offense is the best defense,” the military plans to forward-deploy the systems to outlying islands such as Penghu and Dongyin so that
WHAT WAS ALL THAT FOR? Jaw Shaw-kong said that Cheng Li-wen had pushed for more drastic cuts and attacked him, just for the outcome to be nearly identical to his bill The legislature yesterday passed a supplementary budget bill to fund the purchase of separate packages of US military equipment, with the combined amount of spending capped at NT$780 billion (US$24.8 billion). The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) used their legislative majority to pass the bill, which runs until 2033 and has two main funding provisions. One was for NT$300 billion of arms sales already approved by the US for Taiwan on Dec. 17 last year, the other was for NT$480 billion for another arms package expected to be announced by Washington. The bill, which fell short of the NT$1.25
‘CLEAR MESSAGE’: The bill would set up an interagency ‘tiger team’ to review sanctions tools and other economic options to help deter any Chinese aggression toward Taiwan US Representative Young Kim has introduced a bill to deter Chinese aggression against Taiwan, calling for an interagency “tiger team” to preplan coordinated sanctions and economic measures in response to possible Chinese military or political action against Taiwan. “[Chinese President] Xi Jinping [習近平] has directed the People’s Liberation Army to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027. China has a plan. America should have one too,” Kim said in a news release on Thursday last week. She introduced the “Deter PRC [People’s Republic of China] aggression against Taiwan act” to “ensure the US has a coordinated sanctions strategy ready should
RSS