The longstanding dispute over the livestock feed additive ractopamine seemed to have been resolved yesterday as amendments to related laws cleared the legislature, paving the way for the partial lifting of restrictions on imports of beef containing residues of the drug.
With a 63-46 vote along party lines, the nation is expected to adopt maximum residue levels (MRL) of 10 parts per million (ppm) for ractopamine, a standard favored by President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) and the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT).
The passage of the amendments to the Act Governing Food Sanitation (食品衛生管理法) means that beef containing ractopamine residues would no longer be banned, a policy that Ma claims has impeded bilateral trade negotiations and relations between Taiwan and the US.
Photo: Mandy Cheng, AFP
The amendment authorizes government agencies to establish safety standards for ractopamine used as a cattle feed additive, but bans its use on pigs.
The Department of Health is to be in charge of finalizing the safety standards for ractopamine, Executive Yuan spokesperson Hu Yu-wei (胡幼偉) said.
Hu said the department would take the MRL of 10ppm, recommended by the Codex Alimentarius Commission as a reference point.
Forty Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) legislators and three each from the People First Party (PFP) and the Taiwan Solidarity Union (TSU) voted against the amendment.
The DPP and PFP favored a standard stricter than 10ppm, while the TSU insisted on a zero-tolerance policy.
The four principles that Ma pledged would safeguard public health were not written into law, DPP Legislator Chen Ting-fei (陳亭妃) said.
The four principles are establishing a safe level of ractopamine residue for beef imports; differentiating safety standards for beef and pork products; requiring mandatory labeling of beef products; and maintaining the ban on imports of beef offal from the US.
Instead, she said, the principles of differentiating pork and beef safety standards and mandatory labeling were included in an additional resolution, which would be ineffective because it was not legally binding.
DPP Legislator Pan Men-an (潘孟安) said Ma and the KMT ignored public doubts, in particular those of pig farmers, about the government’s ability to implement the measures, especially differentiating the standards for pork and beef products.
The DPP’s proposal, which called for the adoption of stricter standards than those the commission had approved, was reasonable and made sense, but the KMT blocked the initiative, DPP Legislator Lee Ying-yuan (李應元) said.
The TSU, which had said it did not rule out occupying the podium in the legislature to block the proceedings in order to maintain the zero-tolerance policy, did not disrupt the plenary session yesterday.
With the vote behind it, Ma said the government would seek to resume the Trade and Investment Framework Agreement (TIFA) talks with the US, which have been stalled since 2007, immediately and speed up regional economic integration.
“Resolving the US beef import issue demonstrates our willingness to be part of regional economic integration. Our next step is to resume talks on the TIFA with the US. We cannot afford to wait any longer,” Presidential Office spokesman Fan Chiang Tai-chi (范姜泰基) said of Ma’s response to the vote.
Ma has linked the US beef issue with the nation’s economic and trade relations with the US and other countries, and argued that resuming TIFA talks and joining the Trans-Pacific Partnership would prevent Taiwan from being marginalized in regional economic integration.
The resumption of the TIFA talks would prepare the terrain for negotiations on free-trade agreements (FTA) or other economic pacts with the nation’s major trading partners, Ma said.
Ma said the government would establish a food labeling system that allows consumers to identify US beef products and to make their own choice, while excluding the import of US beef organ parts.
The government would impose a ban on US beef products immediately if any scientific evidence proved that ractopamine is harmful to human health, he said.
Ma thanked Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng (王金平) and KMT legislators for helping to pass the bill.
“The approval of the bill is a great achievement of the close cooperation of the legislative and executive branches under the KMT’s party-state mechanism,” he said.
Meanwhile, retiring American Institute in Taiwan (AIT) Director William Stanton said the result was “personally gratifying to me” because he has “dedicated a great deal of effort to see that the Taiwan[ese] market is open to US beef” during his three-year tenure.
“I cannot think of a better conclusion to my tour as director than to have this issue resolved in a positive way,” said Stanton, who is taking a teaching job at the Taipei American School after he retires from a 34-year diplomatic career next month.
Stanton said he “look[ed] forward to enjoying delicious US beef dinners with my many Taiwan[ese] friends in the excellent restaurants here in Taiwan.”
“Today is a good day for Taiwan[ese] consumers, the Taiwan[ese] democratic process, free trade and for US-Taiwan relations,” Stanton said as he thanked the Ma administration, the legislature, academics, businesspeople and the media, who he said “fought to have this issue decided on the basis of international, science-based standards.”
The AIT also issued a short a statement.
“The US welcomes the vote and looks forward to the quick implementation of the maximum residue level for ractopamine and the resumption of expanded access for US beef in the Taiwan[ese] market,” the AIT statement said. “We also look forward to resuming efforts to expand our vital bilateral trade and investment ties that benefit us both.”
AIT spokesperson Sheila Paskman said the institute could not answer how yesterday’s vote would impact on the resumption of the TIFA talks.
Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson Steve Hsia (夏季昌) said the ministry hopes the talks would resume by the end of this year or early next year.
EXTRADITION DEAL? A former prosecutor said that the US Department of Justice might ask Taiwan to extradite the men in return for the US doing something in return The US won arrest warrants for three Taiwanese men — a former president of China-based Fujian Jinhua Integrated Circuit Co (福建晉華) and two engineers — charged with stealing secrets from Idaho-based Micron Technology Inc. The effort to apprehend the three men — former Fujian Jinhua president Stephen Chen (陳正坤), and Ho Chien-ting (何建廷) and Wang Yong-ming (王永銘), who work for Taiwan-based United Microelectronics Corp (UMC, 聯電) — is notable because they were charged in 2018 in the first case filed under the “China initiative” of US President Donald Trump’s administration targeting trade-secret theft, hacking and economic espionage. However, legal experts have said
There was a net reduction last year in the number of Taipei residents and this year is expected to set a 23-year high for population decline in the city, Ministry of the Interior statistics released yesterday showed. From January to last month, 18,861 more people moved out of Taipei than moved into the capital, an increase of 7,000 from the same period last year, the data showed. That is a 7.2 percent decrease in the city’s population since the start of the year, the biggest drop in both percentage and total number among all municipalities and counties nationwide, the data showed. The data
COUNCILS CLASH: The Mainland Affairs Council said a new office in Hong Kong is to assist people with issues related to investment, study and employment in Taiwan The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) yesterday denied an accusation by the Hong Kong-Taiwan Economic and Cultural Co-operation and Promotion Council that its Taiwanese counterpart in the territory was “interfering with Hong Kong’s internal affairs.” The Hong Kong council leveled the accusation after Taipei’s Taiwan-Hong Kong Economic and Cultural Co-operation Council this month announced it would establish a Taiwan-Hong Kong Services and Exchanges Office to facilitate humanitarian aid for Hong Kongers. The new office is scheduled to begin operations on Wednesday. The MAC yesterday asked the Hong Kong council to “not misinterpret” the government’s intentions. The two Taiwan-Hong Kong councils were established in 2010 to
IRRESPONSIBLE ATTITUDES? Some experts say the NHI system does not do enough to educate the public, or pay doctors to talk to patients, about healthy lifestyles While the life expectancy of Taiwanese newborns in 2018 reached 80.69 years, the number of years people spent in poor health hit a record high at 8.41 years, Ministry of Health and Welfare statistics showed on Saturday. Healthy life expectancy is calculated by a person’s life expectancy minus the time they spend in ill health, such as the loss of mobility, disabilities and chronic disease, based on medical records and calculations about the years they live with disabilities. The number of years that Taiwanese spend in poor health is increasing slowly, but steadily, rising by 0.46 years, or five-and-a-half months, between 2012
RSS