A proposal by a Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) lawmaker that soldiers eat a kilogram of pork a day to help stabilize local pork prices has angered some netizens, who asked: “Are our men and women in uniform doomed to help farmers whenever the market price of their product suffers?”
DPP Legislator Liu Chien-kuo (劉建國) recently said each of the nation’s 270,000 servicemen and women should be made to eat 1kg of pork a day to reverse falling prices because of consumer worries over the use of leanness-enhancing animal feed by the livestock industry.
Liu said since a market-ready hog typically weighs about 100kg, the military could consume almost 3,000 pigs a day.
Liu said the Ministry of National Defense should not just encourage pork consumption, but also purchase additional pork and publish how much it consumes each day.
“Such a policy would boost market confidence in the local pork industry, thereby helping our farmers,” Liu said.
Based on the recipe for Taiwan Railway Administration lunch boxes, each Taiwanese soldier would have to eat 10 pork cutlets a day to comply with Liu’s proposal.
Some military officers joked that they were far too busy to eat so much pork because they were still working to finish off all the surplus oranges and bananas they had been made to consume.
“Who could eat a whole kilo of pork every day? If we can’t eat it all, can we send it to our families?” one of the officers asked.
A non-commissioned officer said the military had been downsizing and that the number of soldiers was shrinking.
“You people [politicians] should seize this opportunity, since our military won’t be able to eat so much [produce] in the future. Fruit growers and hog farmers had better learn to take care of themselves,” he said.
Ministry spokesperson Colonel David Lo (羅紹和) said it had been encouraging all its military units and agencies to purchase and consume pork in an effort to stabilize the market and help protect the local livestock industry.
Ministry officials said that in late 2008, when a glut of oranges was plaguing farmers, the armed forces had launched a 20-month campaign to increase its orange consumption.
By the end of that campaign, the military had consumed more than 600 tonnes of oranges.
Soon afterward, banana farmers saw prices plummet, so the ministry bought more than 100 tonnes of bananas, which made some servicemen feel they were being “force-fed” fruit, ministry officials said.
Now, domestic pork prices are falling and legislators are once again asking soldiers to consume surplus produce again, they said.
“Do our soldiers have no other job requirement than to help eat farm produce?” one ministry official asked.
Some members of the public have demanded that Liu “demonstrate how to eat a kilo of pork each day,” before asking the government to act on his proposal.
To reverse the falling prices, the government should just enforce the law and ferret out pork farmers who feed their hogs with banned drugs, others said.
US climber Alex Honnold is to attempt to scale Taipei 101 without a rope and harness in a live Netflix special on Jan. 24, the streaming platform announced on Wednesday. Accounting for the time difference, the two-hour broadcast of Honnold’s climb, called Skyscraper Live, is to air on Jan. 23 in the US, Netflix said in a statement. Honnold, 40, was the first person ever to free solo climb the 900m El Capitan rock formation in Yosemite National Park — a feat that was recorded and later made into the 2018 documentary film Free Solo. Netflix previewed Skyscraper Live in October, after videos
Starting on Jan. 1, YouBike riders must have insurance to use the service, and a six-month trial of NT$5 coupons under certain conditions would be implemented to balance bike shortages, a joint statement from transportation departments across Taipei, New Taipei City and Taoyuan announced yesterday. The rental bike system operator said that coupons would be offered to riders to rent bikes from full stations, for riders who take out an electric-assisted bike from a full station, and for riders who return a bike to an empty station. All riders with YouBike accounts are automatically eligible for the program, and each membership account
NUMBERS IMBALANCE: More than 4 million Taiwanese have visited China this year, while only about half a million Chinese have visited here Beijing has yet to respond to Taiwan’s requests for negotiation over matters related to the recovery of cross-strait tourism, the Tourism Administration said yesterday. Taiwan’s tourism authority issued the statement after Chinese-language daily the China Times reported yesterday that the government’s policy of banning group tours to China does not stop Taiwanese from visiting the country. As of October, more than 4.2 million had traveled to China this year, exceeding last year. Beijing estimated the number of Taiwanese tourists in China could reach 4.5 million this year. By contrast, only 500,000 Chinese tourists are expected in Taiwan, the report said. The report
Temperatures are forecast to drop steadily as a continental cold air mass moves across Taiwan, with some areas also likely to see heavy rainfall, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. From today through early tomorrow, a cold air mass would keep temperatures low across central and northern Taiwan, and the eastern half of Taiwan proper, with isolated brief showers forecast along Keelung’s north coast, Taipei and New Taipei City’s mountainous areas and eastern Taiwan, it said. Lows of 11°C to 15°C are forecast in central and northern Taiwan, Yilan County, and the outlying Kinmen and Lienchiang (Matsu) counties, and 14°C to 17°C
RSS