Taiwan has neither broken any WTO rules nor breached any commitments by failing to go ahead with a plan to establish maximum residue levels for the livestock feed additive ractopamine, of which the organization was first notified in 2007, a WTO official said.
“The point of notifying the WTO about such measures is transparency and peer review, so that other governments know what measures are being taken and why, and to allow them to comment,” the official, who asked to remain anonymous in accordance with WTO staff rules, said in an e-mail reply to an enquiry from the Taipei Times on Friday.
As part of a plan to pressure Taiwan into lifting its ban on imports of US beef containing ractopamine residues, Washington has been urging Taiwan to honor WTO commitments made in 2007 by the then-Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) government, which it said was based on a notification sent to the WTO on Aug. 16 of that year.
Photo: AFP
In defense of its plan to partially lift the ban, described by the US as a “stumbling block” in bilateral relations, President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) administration has adopted a similar position to that of the US, saying the issue is a problem caused by the DPP in 2007 and would render Taiwan a “unreliable trading partner” if the ban continued.
However, the view expressed by the WTO official on the policy reversal in 2007 explicitly contradicted that position.
According to WTO documents, the then-DPP government notified the WTO that Taiwan intended to adopt maximum residue levels for ractopamine for the muscle, fat, liver and kidney of cattle and pigs, in line with the draft maximum residue levels recommended by the Codex Alimentarius Commission, with a provisional proposed adoption date of Aug. 22, 2007.
Following domestic protest against lifting the ban, the DPP government submitted an addendum to the notification dated Sept. 5, 2007, to the WTO, saying the date on which the maximum residue levels would come into force “has been delayed until a time to be decided at a later date.”
Taiwan had the legal right to decide not to proceed with planned changes in food safety regulations, a decision of which the WTO was informed, and was not in violation of any rules for not implementing the notification, the official said.
The official explained the nature of notification measures used to require WTO members to implement transparency obligations under the Agreement on the Application of Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures, also known as the SPS agreement.
The SPS agreement allows WTO members to set their own level of sanitary and phytosanitary protection in relation to quarantine and food safety, but also requires that countries make their rulemaking process transparent by notifying the WTO “well before the entry into force of relevant measures.”
The procedural step-by-step manual, a practical guide for governments to facilitate the implementation of transparency provisions in the SPS agreement, recommends that a standard time limit for comments on notification of at least 60 days be allowed before a measure is finalized for adoption.
Considering the nature of the notifying measures, a WTO notification is not the same as a WTO commitment, the official said.
Under the SPS agreement, countries are also required to make available the scientific basis for specific phytosanitary regulations to interested parties upon request.
“Since this is a notification about allowing ractopamine [but within set limits], by withdrawing its measure Chinese Taipei might find itself having to explain to other members why it is continuing with the ban,” the official said.
According to a WTO Trade Policy Review of Taiwan, Taipei informed the organization that the government was in ongoing consultations with a view to formulating a ractopamine management policy as various stakeholders hold different opinions and farmers particularly are strongly opposed to establishing maximum residue levels on ractopamine.
In response to concerns expressed about the issue at an SPS committee meeting in 2008, Taiwan has said that the use of ractopamine is forbidden by many WTO members and that the Codex Alimentarius Commission had also been unable to reach a final decision on MRLs for ractopamine, the trade policy review showed.
The CIA has a message for Chinese government officials worried about their place in Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) government: Come work with us. The agency released two Mandarin-language videos on social media on Thursday inviting disgruntled officials to contact the CIA. The recruitment videos posted on YouTube and X racked up more than 5 million views combined in their first day. The outreach comes as CIA Director John Ratcliffe has vowed to boost the agency’s use of intelligence from human sources and its focus on China, which has recently targeted US officials with its own espionage operations. The videos are “aimed at
STEADFAST FRIEND: The bills encourage increased Taiwan-US engagement and address China’s distortion of UN Resolution 2758 to isolate Taiwan internationally The Presidential Office yesterday thanked the US House of Representatives for unanimously passing two Taiwan-related bills highlighting its solid support for Taiwan’s democracy and global participation, and for deepening bilateral relations. One of the bills, the Taiwan Assurance Implementation Act, requires the US Department of State to periodically review its guidelines for engagement with Taiwan, and report to the US Congress on the guidelines and plans to lift self-imposed limitations on US-Taiwan engagement. The other bill is the Taiwan International Solidarity Act, which clarifies that UN Resolution 2758 does not address the issue of the representation of Taiwan or its people in
SHIFT: Taiwan’s better-than-expected first-quarter GDP and signs of weakness in the US have driven global capital back to emerging markets, the central bank head said The central bank yesterday blamed market speculation for the steep rise in the local currency, and urged exporters and financial institutions to stay calm and stop panic sell-offs to avoid hurting their own profitability. The nation’s top monetary policymaker said that it would step in, if necessary, to maintain order and stability in the foreign exchange market. The remarks came as the NT dollar yesterday closed up NT$0.919 to NT$30.145 against the US dollar in Taipei trading, after rising as high as NT$29.59 in intraday trading. The local currency has surged 5.85 percent against the greenback over the past two sessions, central
US Indo-Pacific Commander Admiral Samuel Paparo on Friday expressed concern over the rate at which China is diversifying its military exercises, the Financial Times (FT) reported on Saturday. “The rates of change on the depth and breadth of their exercises is the one non-linear effect that I’ve seen in the last year that wakes me up at night or keeps me up at night,” Paparo was quoted by FT as saying while attending the annual Sedona Forum at the McCain Institute in Arizona. Paparo also expressed concern over the speed with which China was expanding its military. While the US
RSS