The lingering dispute between Taiwan and the US over a feed additive for hog and cattle production that continues to hinder high-level bilateral trade talks appears to show no sign of being resolved soon as neither side has demonstrated any inclination to change its position.
Whether Taiwan will revise its zero-tolerance policy against the use of ractopamine, a growth promoter that increases lean muscle mass in livestock, is now center stage in the Taiwan-US trade debate.
Taiwan began testing US beef for ractopamine in January, prompting the US to delay the resumption of bilateral talks under the Trade and Investment Framework Agreement (TIFA) scheduled to take place earlier this year.
The hope that dialogue could be restored was further dashed when the Codex Alimentarius Commission (CAC), the international food standards setting body, failed to adopt a maximum residue level (MRL) for ractopamine early this month, to which Taiwan responded by saying that its ban would remain in place.
In reply to inquiries from the Taipei Times on Tuesday, American Institute in Taiwan (AIT) spokesperson Sheila Paskman said: “We have nothing to announce at this time with regard to scheduling future TIFA meetings.”
American Chamber of Commerce in Taipei president Andrea Wu (吳王小珍) said that TIFA talks “will not be resumed for the moment based on information the chamber has gathered from various sources, mainly due to [the] ractopamine issue.”
Asked to explain what led the US to call Taiwan’s policy for ractopamine an “unjustified” trade barrier in the absence of an international standard, Paskman reiterated US concern that the ban lacks scientific standing.
The US remains very disappointed that Taiwan has not moved forward with the implementation of its own proposed MRL for ractopamine, which it notified the WTO about in 2007, she said.
“The ractopamine ban is inconsistent with the scientific evidence on the safety of ractopamine, as well as Taiwan’s own risk assessment conducted in 2007,” she said.
Taiwanese officials who handled the issue in 2007 rejected that assertion.
Cheng Hui-wen (鄭慧文), then-director-general of the Department of Health’s (DOH) Bureau of Food and Sanitation, said that a decision on whether to adopt an MRL for ractopamine in 2007 “had not been made” when Taiwan notified the WTO.
“It is wrong to say that Taiwan failed to fulfill its commitment to the WTO or has delayed implementing an MRL for ractopamine, as a decision to allow the use of ractopamine was never made,” Cheng said.
WTO documents show that Taiwan notified the WTO on Aug. 16, 2007, of its intention to establish an MRL for ractopamine, following a risk assessment conducted by the DOH which found that ractopamine was safe for use.
In September 2007, Taiwan published an addendum to its WTO notification that delayed adoption to an unspecified future date.
An MRL was never set, mainly because of vehement opposition from Taiwan’s pig farmers, said Huang Kuo-ching (黃國青), deputy director-general of the Bureau of Animal and Plant Health Inspection and Quarantine.
Tsai Shu-chen (蔡淑真), who heads the Food and Drug Administration, which was established on Jan. 1 last year, said it was perfectly within Taiwan’s legal right to not proceed with the notification.
The WTO Agreement on Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures required governments to notify the WTO of changes in food regulations and allowed for a recommendation period of about two months before publication of the notification, Tsai said.
“During the recommendation period, governments respond to and communicate with concerned parties. When the period is over and if objections to new regulations remain strong, they are not obligated to publish the notification,” she said.
In the notification, Taiwan proposed to adopt a draft Codex MRLs for ractopamine of 10 micrograms/kg of body weight for muscle and fat tissue, 40 micrograms/kg of body weight for liver tissue, and 90 micrograms/kg of body weight for kidney tissue in cattle and pigs.
The Joint Food and Agriculture Organization/WHO Expert Committee on Food Additives, the Codex’s scientific advisory committee has confirmed human safety standards three times, but the CAC declined to adopt the recommendation for four consecutive years because of strong opposition from countries led by the EU and China.
Without international standards, “Taiwan’s zero-tolerance policy against the use of ractopamine is not in violation of WTO rules,” said Roy Chun Lee (李淳), an assistant director of the Taiwan WTO Center at the Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research.
However, Taiwan could still find it difficult to defend the zero-tolerance policy because of inconsistencies between the policy and its own risk assessment, he said.
In cases when international safety standards for pesticide residue in food have yet to be set, the SPS Agreement required countries to establish domestic standards based on scientific evidence and risk assessments, Lee said.
“Taiwan can reasonably uphold its ban because the Codex MRL for ractopamine is still a draft version, but the US could just as well argue that Taiwan does not have scientific evidence to prove the existence of human health risks associated with ractopamine,” he said.
An economic official with knowledge about the negotiations that led to Taiwan’s entry into the WTO on Jan. 1, 2002, said, on condition of anonymity, that a commitment was made to the US during the WTO accession talks that Taiwan would set MRLs for agricultural and veterinary chemicals in agricultural produce.
US official documents attest to the statement made by the official, who previously served in the country’s representative office to the WTO.
Among the documents, the “Report on Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures” presented by US Trade Representative Ronald Kirk showed that the US signed an agreement on MRLs with Taiwan in 1999 “which provides that Taiwan will defer to Codex MRLs, or US MRLs where Codex has not set a tolerance, until Taiwan establishes a more comprehensive set of MRLs.”
Taiwan’s slow and cumbersome process for adopting MRLs has resulted in a backlog of over 1,500 MRL applications and is creating a significant level of uncertainty within the US agricultural export industry, the report said.
Since 2006, this backlog has resulted in the rejection of various US agricultural shipments (cherries, apples, wheat, barley, strawberries and corn) as a result of the detection of pesticide residue levels that are within US or Codex standards, but for which Taiwan has not yet established MRLs, it said.
“To avoid continuing trade disruptions, the United States has urged Taiwan on several occasions to act consistently with the 1999 US–Taiwan agreement on MRLs,” Kirk said.
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