Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) lawmakers said yesterday that the government’s preventive measures against US beef imports containing the animal feed additive ractopamine had failed after health officials said no importer had been fined during the past two years.
Citing high rates of US beef products failing inspections at customs and in the marketplace, DPP legislators told a press conference that the “three management and five checkpoint (三管五卡)” measures had been a failure and that they would not be able to guarantee public health if the ban on ractopamine is lifted.
The pledge to conduct regular inspections at meat-processing factories, the border and in markets was initiated by then-premier Wu Den-yih (吳敦義) in November 2009 amid a dispute over the partial lifting of a ban on US beef imports.
Only 6.5 percent of imported US beef products were inspected by customs last year, with more than 21 percent of the items inspected being rejected because they contained ractopamine, DPP Legislator Chen Ting-fei (陳亭妃) said yesterday, adding that Department of Health officials had only inspected three US meat processors — 40 percent of the total number of US exporters.
The low inspection rate, the high failure rate and the recent discoveries of additives in US beef products sold in retail stores, markets and steakhouses suggest that the administration is incapable of handling the monitoring, she said.
Local importers who imported products containing the drug are subject to a fine of between NT$60,000 and NT$6 million (US$2,037 and US$203,700), but no importer has been fined since the measures were adopted in 2009, said Tsai Shu-chen (蔡淑貞), director of the Food and Drug Administration’s Division of Food Safety.
The Department of Health is unable to inspect every shipment of imported US beef products at customs as the DPP has demanded because of a lack of personnel and resources, Tsai added.
The DPP continued to question the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) administration’s pledge of “no predetermined position and no timetable” on the dispute, saying that all the signs point to the lifting of the ban following the current legislative session.
Premier Sean Chen (陳冲) and the Council of Agriculture had both cited incorrect data in their reports, with Chen saying that only 29 countries have banned the drug, when there are more than 160 countries that disallow it, DPP Legislator Pan Men-an (潘孟安) said, adding that Chen and the council both suggested they were leaning toward lifting the ban.
DPP Legislator Huang Wei-cher (黃偉哲) said the Department of Health’s position “was pretty clear” in a directive which demands that health officials nationwide carry out “low-key” inspections of US beef products.
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