Restaurants should not imply on their menus that any of their dishes are made with beef from Japan as this product is banned in Taiwan, the Department of Health (DOH) said.
The department was responding to the Consumers’ Foundation, which on Friday called on the government to pay closer attention to the problem of Taiwan’s restaurants misleading consumers by using the names of Japanese cities on their menus to describe their beef and pork dishes.
For example, the foundation said, the so-called “Kobe beef” and “Matsusaka pork” dishes that are quite popular in Taiwan definitely do not contain meat from Japan.
The department, however, said there was nothing wrong with the use of the term “Matsusaka pork” as it was created by local businesses to describe a cut of pork that has a perfect fat-to-meat ratio.
Kobe beef or “Matsusaka beef,” however, are not acceptable, the department said.
The importation of beef from Japan has been prohibited in Taiwan since 2001, when mad-cow disease appeared in that country.
Taiwan banned Japanese pork in April this year after the highly contagious foot-and-mouth disease was reported among cloven-hoofed livestock in Japan.
Nonetheless, the label “Produced in Japan” is often a synonym for “high quality” among Taiwanese consumers, according to the non-profit Consumers’ Foundation.
As a result, Japanese products are often priced higher than those produced in Taiwan or imported from other countries, the foundation said in a statement.
Citing the results of an online survey it conducted early this month, the foundation said it found 15 bistros and restaurants that were using the “meat from Japan” tag for some of the dishes on their menus.
Some selections were advertised as “Matsusaka pork,” “Kobe beef” and even “Japanese beef” on the Chinese-language menus of the restaurants, the foundation said.
One of the eateries, the popular Gourmet teppanyaki and hot-pot restaurant in Taipei City, had an item listed as “Kobe beef” on its online menu, priced at NT$1,800, the foundation said.
When asked about the origin of the meat in the dish, the restaurant said it was imported either from the US or Australia, the foundation said.
Some other restaurants that were advertising “Japanese beef” also admitted that the meat was from Australia, it added.
Such misleading advertising is prohibited under the Fair Trade Act (公平交易法) and if the dishes indeed contained Japanese beef, then the meat was smuggled into the country, the foundation said.
It urged food businesses in Taiwan not to mislead consumers, but rather to clearly state on their menus that dishes carrying names such as “Japanese beef” are in fact made with beef from Australia.
The foundation also called on the Food and Drug Administration to establish regulations to prevent the abuse of special terms in food advertising.
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
LIKE FAMILY: People now treat dogs and cats as family members. They receive the same medical treatments and tests as humans do, a veterinary association official said The number of pet dogs and cats in Taiwan has officially outnumbered the number of human newborns last year, data from the Ministry of Agriculture’s pet registration information system showed. As of last year, Taiwan had 94,544 registered pet dogs and 137,652 pet cats, the data showed. By contrast, 135,571 babies were born last year. Demand for medical care for pet animals has also risen. As of Feb. 29, there were 5,773 veterinarians in Taiwan, 3,993 of whom were for pet animals, statistics from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency showed. In 2022, the nation had 3,077 pediatricians. As of last
XINJIANG: Officials are conducting a report into amending an existing law or to enact a special law to prohibit goods using forced labor Taiwan is mulling an amendment prohibiting the importation of goods using forced labor, similar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) passed by the US Congress in 2021 that imposed limits on goods produced using forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. A government official who wished to remain anonymous said yesterday that as the US customs law explicitly prohibits the importation of goods made using forced labor, in 2021 it passed the specialized UFLPA to limit the importation of cotton and other goods from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region. Taiwan does not have the legal basis to prohibit the importation of goods