Legislators yesterday again failed to deliver on a promise to come to a consensus on amending the Act Governing Food Sanitation (食品衛生管理法) to address perceived flaws in the Taiwan-US protocol that allows the entry of what some lawmakers have called “unsafe US beef products.”
Legislators initially set a deadline of Nov. 17 to amend the legislation based on the agreed conclusion reached at a cross-party negotiation meeting, however, lawmakers last Friday postponed the deadline to yesterday, but a settlement is still not in sight.
The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) caucus yesterday revised its original version. The original banned imports of skull, brains, eyes, spinal cords, ground beef and intestines from “areas affected by mad cow disease or areas with a history of the infections,” while the new version banned such products from “areas affected by mad cow disease or areas with a history of the infection in the last 10 years.”
PHOTO: CNA
The Act had allowed the import of US ground beef and intestines, but if the amendment passes, such imports would be banned from entering the country because the US discovered its third mad cow disease case in 2003.
“The latest DPP version was close to the [KMT caucus’] position, but the Presidential Office still has concerns over violation of the protocol,” KMT caucus whip Lu Hsueh-chang (呂學樟) said.
“If the Presidential Office is OK with the DPP’s version, the KMT caucus will support it. If not, we hope the Office will explain to the public its reasons,” Lu said.
The KMT’s latest proposal says that skulls, brains, eyes and spinal cords imported from areas where mad cow disease has been reported in the past 10 years should be banned from entry and ground beef and intestines without examination credentials issued by exporting countries that it has been thawed and passed batch-by-batch inspections should not be allowed entry.
The legislative plenary session, scheduled to review bills, sat idle the whole day yesterday because of the disagreements.
The military has spotted two Chinese warships operating in waters near Penghu County in the Taiwan Strait and sent its own naval and air forces to monitor the vessels, the Ministry of National Defense (MND) said. Beijing sends warships and warplanes into the waters and skies around Taiwan on an almost daily basis, drawing condemnation from Taipei. While the ministry offers daily updates on the locations of Chinese military aircraft, it only rarely gives details of where Chinese warships are operating, generally only when it detects aircraft carriers, as happened last week. A Chinese destroyer and a frigate entered waters to the southwest
The eastern extension of the Taipei MRT Red Line could begin operations as early as late June, the Taipei Department of Rapid Transit Systems said yesterday. Taipei Rapid Transit Corp said it is considering offering one month of free rides on the new section to mark its opening. Construction progress on the 1.4km extension, which is to run from the current terminal Xiangshan Station to a new eastern terminal, Guangci/Fengtian Temple Station, was 90.6 percent complete by the end of last month, the department said in a report to the Taipei City Council's Transportation Committee. While construction began in October 2016 with an
NON-RED SUPPLY: Boosting the nation’s drone industry is becoming increasingly urgent as China’s UAV dominance could become an issue in a crisis, an analyst said Taiwan’s drone exports to Europe grew 41.7-fold from 2024 to last year, with demand from Ukraine’s fight against Russian aggression the most likely driver of growth, a study showed. The Institute for Democracy, Society and Emerging Technology (DSET) in a statement on Wednesday said it found that many of Taiwan’s uncrewed aerial vehicle (UAV) sales were from Poland and the Czech Republic. These countries likely transferred the drones to Ukraine to aid it in its fight against the Russian invasion that started in 2022, it said. Despite the gains, Taiwan is not the dominant drone exporter to these markets, ranking second and fourth
Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s comment last year on Tokyo’s potential reaction to a Taiwan-China conflict has forced Beijing to rewrite its invasion plans, a retired Japanese general said. Takaichi told the Diet on Nov. 7 last year that a Chinese naval blockade or military attack on Taiwan could constitute a “survival-threatening situation” for Japan, potentially allowing Tokyo to exercise its right to collective self-defense. Former Japan Ground Self-Defense Force general Kiyofumi Ogawa said in a recent speech that the remark has been interpreted as meaning Japan could intervene in the early stages of a Taiwan Strait conflict, undermining China’s previous assumptions
RSS