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.
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