The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) yesterday said it was “optimistic” the government would allow a comprehensive opening to US beef “sometime this year” after a four-year ban on meat from US cattle aged more than 30 months.
Director-general of the ministry’s Department of North American Affairs Harry Tseng (曾厚仁) said US beef topped the discussion agenda between the two sides and negotiations had reached their final stage.
As the issue is complicated, representatives from the Department of Health and the Council of Agriculture, in addition to the Ministry of Economic Affairs and MOFA, have been involved in the process, said Teng at a regular press briefing yesterday.
PUSHING
The American Institute in Taiwan (AIT) has been pushing Taiwan to open its market to US beef. On several occasions, AIT Director Stephen Young has said US beef poses no health risk and urged Taiwan to follow World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE) recommendations by allowing importation of a full range of US beef products.
Last December, MOFA Minister Francisco Ou (歐鴻鍊) said the government was carefully assessing the issue in light of public disturbances in South Korea when Seoul agreed to lift the ban. The South Korean Cabinet resigned en masse because of vehement public opposition to the decision.
PARTIAL BAN
Since 2005, Taiwan twice imposed a partial ban on US beef after two confirmed cases of bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or mad cow disease, were discovered in the US. Currently, only bone-free beef from cattle aged less than 30 months is allowed to be sold in Taiwan.
In related news, Tseng refused to confirm speculation that William Stanton, the US deputy representative to South Korea, was to replace Young, whose term ends this summer.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching