The legislature yesterday sent 10 draft bills on the use of leanness enhancers to one of its committees, which is set to deliberate on each proposal next week.
In addition to the 10 bills submitted by ruling and opposition lawmakers, the Social Welfare and Environmental Hygiene Committee had received four bills — including one proposed by the People First Party — on Friday last week.
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Tsai Chin-lung (蔡錦隆), one of the committee’s conveners, said the committee would review bills on amending the food safety law on Wednesday.
Photo: Lo Pei-der, Taipei Times
The use of ractopamine, a feed additive banned in Taiwan and many other countries, but allowed in the US, has been a subject of hot debate, especially after the Cabinet announced late on Monday night that it was planning to conditionally relax its ban on imports of US beef containing the drug.
Among the bills sent for review yesterday, those submitted by the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) caucus and several DPP lawmakers, along with one put forward by KMT Legislator Yang Li-huan (楊麗環), proposed a zero-tolerance stance on the level of leanness enhancers for meat products.
Bills submitted by DPP legislators Chen Ou-po (陳歐珀) and Chiu Chin-wei (邱志偉) called for mandatory labeling of drug residue levels on meat products and for the point of origin of products tol also be disclosed.
In addition, a bill by Taiwan Solidarity Union Legislator Lin Shih-chia (林世嘉) would give the legislature the power to review safety levels for pesticide and drug residue in food.
NATURE TAKES ITS COURSE: The agency’s head said he felt a sense of loss watching red-banded snakes eat the babies, as they had decided on non-intervention The Forestry and Nature Conservation Agency yesterday released a documentary on a hundred-pace viper that had incubated 16 eggs, all of which hatched, but only a baby viper escaped after they were attacked by red-banded snakes. The agency’s Taichung branch last year launched the viper reproduction monitoring project soon after forest rangers Lin Chun-yu (林俊佑) and Chou Chia-cheng (周家成) spotted a pregnant hundred-pace viper in a grass-covered burrow near a parking lot in Tbulan Village (松鶴部落). The Atayal village, in Taichung’s Heping District (和平), is headed by Ecyang Yapu, who was positive about the project and assisted in access control and power
The Coast Guard Administration (CGA) yesterday said that it had deployed vessels to “monitor” Chinese ships operating in waters off the east coast. The CGA said it dispatched vessels in response to a China Coast Guard announcement that it had carried out another “routine law-enforcement patrol” in waters off the east coast. “The CGA firmly rejects China’s cognitive warfare campaign of ‘law enforcement in name, jurisdictional expansion in practice,’” it said on X. As of 11am yesterday, two China Coast Guard ships were “loitering and drifting” about 105 nautical miles (195km) and 74 nautical miles east of Green Island (綠島) respectively, it said. It
A sharp rise in compensation to be paid by air force officers who leave before completing their required service could indicate an increase in pilots leaving the military early, an analyst said on Friday, warning that the trend could worsen a shortage of experienced personnel. Chieh Chung (揭仲), a researcher at the Association for Strategic Foresight, issued the warning even though the number of volunteer military personnel is expected to increase next year. The planned headcount for volunteer military personnel, covering officers, noncommissioned officers (NCO) and enlisted soldiers, is 158,223 for next year, up 4,258 from 153,965 this year, Chieh said. The increase
Potential improvements to munitions used by China’s long-range rocket-artillery units could extend their range to cover the entire Miyako Strait, which might give the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) the ability to secure the strategic waterway, the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said in a report. The PLA’s long-range rocket-artillery units deployed along the Taiwan Strait are concentrated along the coast of Fujian Province, including Changle, Pingtan and Shishi, the quarterly report on China said. The artillery brigades of the PLA’s 71st, 72nd and 73rd group armies have been deployed, with preparations for potential battlefield operations under way since August 2022, the report
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