A total of seven proposals aiming to regulate the use of the feed additive ractopamine have been submitted to the legislature, which has earned a say in major policy decisions, at least during this legislative session.
Among the proposed amendments to the Act Governing Food Sanitation (食品衛生管理法), six different versions proposed by the Taiwan Solidarity Union (TSU) caucus, the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) caucus, and Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers suggested maintaining the ban on ractopamine in imported meats.
The amendment from the People First Party (PFP) caucus was the only one that proposed allowing imports of meat with ractopamine residue, but only after the Codex Alimentarius Commission, the international food standards body, approved draft standards for maximum residue levels (MRLs) for ractopamine.
Executive Yuan spokesman Philip Yang (楊永明) declined to comment on the proposals, saying the government had not yet decided its stance on the issue.
Taiwan has been under pressure from the US to allow the import of US beef containing traces of ractopamine, banned in the country since 2006, and the ban could be lifted via an executive order by the government legally mandating permissible levels of feed additives.
Based on their opposition to any relaxation of the ban, the DPP and the TSU both sought to restrict administrative discretion in the -interest of public health.
The DPP-proposed amendment stipulated that standards on permissible levels of pesticide residue or veterinary drugs set by the government “shall be subject to legislative approval before implementation.”
Similarly, the TSU version proposed that the government “shall refer the standards to the legislature for approval before implementation when it comes to substances deemed harmful to human health.”
The DPP also sought to write into the Act Governing Food Sanitation prohibition of the use of beta-agonists, the class of drug to which ractopamine belongs, and that the tolerance for beta-agonists in livestock products, including brains, eyes, spines, ground meat, offal and related products shall be zero.
KMT Legislator Yang Li-huan (楊麗環) drafted a proposal setting out a zero-tolerance policy for the meat products with traces of beta-agonists and imposed a fine of up to NT$6 million (US$202,000) for those found to be in violation.
KMT Legislator Huang Chao-shun (黃昭順) put forward an amendment that proposed even more severe measures to keep Taiwan’s animal husbandry sector completely free of beta-agonists.
Under her proposal, meat products with traces of beta-agonists would be defined as substances harmful to human health, and their production, processing, sale, import and export prohibited.
Countries and areas that have recorded cases of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE, or “mad cow disease”) or a disease in humans called variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD), that allow the use of beta-agonists, and have had cases of meat found with traces of beta-agonists would be defined by as “high-risk countries and areas.”
Huang said that meat imports from such places should carry a warning label identifying the country of origin and must be subject to safety testing conducted at the place of production, national borders and in markets.
The government should closely monitor meat products imported from such places by verifying documentation, checking whether shipments are marked with detailed product information, opening a high percentage of containers at borders to conduct food safety tests and provide access information on suspected problem products immediately, the proposal said.
The PFP argued that Taiwan should lift the ban if the Codex Alimentarius Commission approved the draft MRLs recommended by the Joint FAO/WHO Expert Committee on Food Additives to bring its local rules into line with international standards when they are established.
Its proposal stipulated that permissible levels of pesticide residue or veterinary drugs in the country should not be higher than the standards set up by the Codex Alimentarius Commission.
On Friday the Executive Yuan reached a consensus with lawmakers opposed to lifting the ban that it would not allow the import of US beef containing traces of ractopamine via an executive order before the legislative session ends at the end of May or June.
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
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
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