Science is often used as a political and economic bargaining chip in international talks on food safety, as seen in the recent dispute about beef between Taiwan and the US, a former US official said recently.
“The issues of agriculture and food safety are often used as chips for politicians. Unfortunately, I don’t think these things will stop in the foreseeable future,” Joseph Jen (任築山), an undersecretary for research, education and economics in the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) from 2001 to 2005, said in an interview on Friday.
“True science has been ignored so far,” said the 72-year-old scientist, who emigrated from Taiwan to the US in 1962 and retired last year as the dean of the College of Agriculture at California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo.
Political and economic factors are usually placed above food safety in most international agricultural negotiations because most countries send diplomatic officials, rather than scientists, to handle the talks, Jen said.
The recent dispute between Taiwan and the US over imports of US beef is just one example of the complexity that arises when science is mixed with politics, he said.
The legislature passed an amendment in January last year that banned imports of selected beef products from countries, including the US, with documented cases of mad cow disease in the past decade.
That meant that US beef products seen as posing potential health risks, such as ground beef and organs, were barred from entering Taiwan, in contravention of a bilateral beef trade protocol signed by the two countries in October 2009.
Tensions over beef arose again this January, when US beef products found to contain residue of ractopamine — a feed additive used to promote the growth of lean meat that is banned in Taiwan — were taken off the shelves of local stores.
The move prompted the US to call off a long anticipated meeting under the Trade and Investment Framework Agreement, an official framework for Taiwan-US dialogue on trade and economic issues in the absence of diplomatic ties.
Jen said Taiwan’s decision last year was not based on scientific research because the probability of contracting mad cow disease by consuming US beef was lower than being hit by a car.
As for this year’s dispute, Jen said Taiwan cited the EU’s zero tolerance policy on ractopamine to justify the ban and would wait for the conclusions of a meeting of the Codex Alimentarius Commission in July that will set maximum residue levels for ractopamine, before reconsidering the issue.
However, even then, politics and science are mixing because the EU and the Codex both have been heavily influenced by politics, Jen said.
“Its [the Codex’s] science is politically approved science, not the real science,” he said, calling the EU “the main culprit” of mixing science with politics, starting with its condemnation of US-produced genetically modified organism products.
Food safety is a complicated issue because many people and processes are involved in the production chain, said Jen, who received his bachelor’s degree in agricultural chemistry from National Taiwan University in 1960.
“The keys for modern-day scientists are ‘probability’ and ‘risk assessment,’ because there is no such thing as a ‘zero risk.’ There is no magic wand that can solve anything in a blink of an eye either,” he said.
However, Jen said that it always takes a long time for scientists to conduct research and reach a consensus, and before that happens, every government gets to make its own policies and decisions.
“I don’t think I am in a position to recommend to Taiwan’s government what to do. I think it will do what it thinks is the best for the people of Taiwan,” said Jen, who was visiting Taiwan for the first time in 23 years.
He urged the media to play a positive role in promoting food safety and relaying accurate messages to people, because media reports too often cause panic by exaggerating negative effects.
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
REVENGE TRAVEL: A surge in ticket prices should ease this year, but inflation would likely keep tickets at a higher price than before the pandemic Scoot is to offer six additional flights between Singapore and Northeast Asia, with all routes transiting Taipei from April 1, as the budget airline continues to resume operations that were paused during the COVID-19 pandemic, a Scoot official said on Thursday. Vice president of sales Lee Yong Sin (李榮新) said at a gathering with reporters in Taipei that the number of flights from Singapore to Japan and South Korea with a stop in Taiwan would increase from 15 to 21 each week. That change means the number of the Singapore-Taiwan-Tokyo flights per week would increase from seven to 12, while Singapore-Taiwan-Seoul
BAD NEIGHBORS: China took fourth place among countries spreading disinformation, with Hong Kong being used as a hub to spread propaganda, a V-Dem study found Taiwan has been rated as the country most affected by disinformation for the 11th consecutive year in a study by the global research project Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem). The nation continues to be a target of disinformation originating from China, and Hong Kong is increasingly being used as a base from which to disseminate that disinformation, the report said. After Taiwan, Latvia and Palestine ranked second and third respectively, while Nicaragua, North Korea, Venezuela and China, in that order, were the countries that spread the most disinformation, the report said. Each country listed in the report was given a score,
POOR PREPARATION: Cultures can form on food that is out of refrigeration for too long and cooking does not reliably neutralize their toxins, an epidemiologist said Medical professionals yesterday said that suspected food poisoning deaths revolving around a restaurant at Far Eastern Department Store Xinyi A13 Store in Taipei could have been caused by one of several types of bacterium. Ho Mei-shang (何美鄉), an epidemiologist at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Biomedical Sciences, wrote on Facebook that the death of a 39-year-old customer of the restaurant suggests the toxin involved was either “highly potent or present in massive large quantities.” People who ate at the restaurant showed symptoms within hours of consuming the food, suggesting that the poisoning resulted from contamination by a toxin and not infection of the