The US has a “positive” view of the central government’s new policy direction to allow a safe level of the leanness-enhancing drug ractopamine in beef, a Ministry of Foreign Affairs official said yesterday.
Bruce Linghu (令狐榮達), director-general of the Department of North American Affairs, was referring to the Executive Yuan’s decision to handle the US beef issue based on four principles: allowing a safe level of ractopamine in beef; separating the permits for importing beef and pork; clearly labeling US beef imports; and maintaining the import ban on offal from cows.
The feed additive is currently banned in Taiwan. Moves to seize shipments of beef containing traces of ractopamine have caused a rift with Washington that the new policy hopes to resolve.
Asked if Taipei’s “positive” reaction meant that Washington supported the new policy principles, Linghu said: “It could be interpreted in this way.”
The official described the US reaction as substantial progress and he said he hoped the beef controversy would be settled in a pragmatic manner as soon as possible.
Meanwhile, in response to media reports that Washington reportedly disagreed with proposed candidates to succeed Representative to the US Jason Yuan (袁健生), Linghu called them “groundless and baseless.”
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:
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