The Council of Agriculture (COA) yesterday sought to clarify the conclusions reached at the third technical advisory committee meeting about ractopamine residue held on Saturday.
During the meeting, two conclusions reached at the previous meeting were challenged — that coronary problems could only be caused by “directly ingesting more than 5,000μg of ractopamine,” which is the equivalent of “eating 500kg of meat containing ractopamine residue at one sitting,” and that “for the past 10 years or more, no research has identified any side effects in consumers who ate such meat.”
As a result, the early conclusion was revised to read: “So far, the committee has not found any large-scale epidemiology research on the human consumption of meat containing ractopamine residue, nor found any case report of consumers being poisoned [from eating such meat],” the council said at a press conference.
Moreover, as for the reliability of a report about 218,000 dead or sick pigs related to ractopamine consumption, the council said the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) had amended that number to about 170,000.
However, the committee determined that the number was the product of a self-report system and had not been confirmed by scientific review.
It said that the government should ask for more information from the US to determine the relationship between the 170,000 reported cases and ractopamine usage.
In addition, the council said references provided by specialists at the meeting indicated that pigs fed with ractopamine showed increased frequency of stress and aggressiveness.
Council of Agriculture Deputy Minister Wang Cheng-teng (王政騰) said the specialists at the third meeting had expressed different viewpoints on the subject under discussion, and the council would continue to hold meets as a platform for the expression of a wide range of opinions.
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