Executive Yuan spokesman Philip Yang (楊永明) yesterday said that nothing has been determined yet by the government pertaining to the thorny issue of US beef imports.
Yang declined to confirm the veracity of a report in the Chinese-language United Daily News that the government would soon lift its ban on US beef under certain conditions, including that warning labels would be carried on packaging telling consumers that the product might contain residue of the leanness-enhancing feed additive ractopamine.
However, he confirmed that the new Cabinet, which was sworn in on Monday, would devote its first inter-ministerial meeting exclusively to the issue, which is now focused on how to deal with ractopamine-tainted US beef.
The meeting of a Cabinet task force, which aims to solve the beef issue, would make its decision based on considerations of professional assessment, risk management and public opinion, Yang said.
The issue is one of the major challenges facing the new Cabinet because of the stakes involved in terms of Taiwan’s trade relations with the US.
Just as it appeared that suspended talks between Taiwan and the US under the bilateral Trade and Investment Framework Agreement would resume in late in 2010 and early last year, Washington decided not to proceed after shipments of US beef exported to Taiwan in January last year were seized by the authorities after they were found to contain traces of ractopamine.
Washington has since pressured Taipei to revise its zero-tolerance policy on the leanness-enhancing drug.
Yang said the government has no preconceptions on the issue and has not set a timetable for its resolution.
Meanwhile the Department of Health said the government could either review its zero-tolerance policy on ractopamine; maintain its ban; lift the ban on beef, but not on pork; or allow ractopamine in meat products as long as it is labeled stating the meat’s place of origin and that the product might contain residue of the drug.
Several veterinary and toxicology experts have noted that small traces of the livestock feed additive in beef pose no health threat unless massive quantities of affected meat are consumed.
Lucy Sun (孫璐西), a National Taiwan University professor of food science and technology, said that even if many academics and doctors have confirmed that ractopamine is a safe, low-risk leanness enhancer, the government should still reassess the “hidden risks” that the drug might pose to consumers.
“Once a green light is given to the opening up, the government should at least require that the meat packaging states the place of origin and that it may contain ractopamine, to allow consumers to make their own choice,” Sun said.
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