A campaign launched by the Consumers’ Foundation seeking a national referendum on US bone-in beef imports entered its second phase yesterday.
Foundation Chairman Hsieh Tien-jen (謝天仁), along with representatives of four other civic groups involved in the campaign, visited the Central Election Commission (CEC) to collect the forms for the second phase.
Hsieh said he hoped they could persuade 1 million eligible voters to sign the petition before an Aug. 10 deadline.
The proposed referendum would ask voters to “veto the government’s decision in November to open Taiwan’s market to US bone-in beef, ground beef and bovine offal and spinal cords from cattle aged under 30 months” and demand that the government renegotiate the beef protocol with the US.
Hsieh said the dispute over US beef imports had not been resolved and that Washington had threatened to retaliate against Taiwan for breaking promises in the protocol signed last year.
Though the legislature has voted to revise the law to force the government to reinstate a ban on imports of US ground beef and beef offal, Washington can demand that Taipei open its market based on the protocol, he said.
Urging the public to speak up, Hsieh said the civic groups hoped people would show the US their concerns about bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), or mad cow disease.
Under the Referendum Act (公投法), a petition is subject to approval by the Cabinet’s Referendum Screening Committee in the first phase, during which the initiator must obtain the endorsement of at least 0.5 percent of the number of people who were eligible to vote in the last presidential election.
The foundation-led initiative passed the first stage last month, collecting 129,000 signatures — far surpassing the 86,000 required among 17.32 million people who were eligible to vote in the 2008 presidential election.
In the second phase, the initiators must secure the endorsement of at least 5 percent of eligible voters within six months of launching the petition.
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