Greenpeace Taiwan yesterday released its comparative guide to pesticide control at the nation’s six major hypermarket and supermarket chains, giving Wellcome supermarket the highest score.
The organization said it conducted a survey on pesticide control at more than 150 branches of the Wellcome, Matsusei Supermarket, A.mart, RT-mart, Carrefour Taiwan and Pxmart chains, grading them on practical pesticide-reduction measures, pesticide control policies, information transparency and consumers’ perception.
Nearly 1,000 consumers shopping at these markets were asked to grade the grocery stores according to their satisfaction with product labeling and pesticide control, it added.
The results of the survey were divided into two parts — execution performance and consumers’ perception.
Wellcome received the highest score for its execution, followed by Carrefour Taiwan, and with Pxmart receiving the lowest score because it would not reveal information on its pesticide control. Mastusei topped the list in consumers’ perception, followed by Carrefour Taiwan, while Pxmart again received the lowest score.
“The results showed a big contrast between the actual execution and consumers’ perceptions,” Greenpeace Taiwan agriculture project manager Tsai Szu-ting (蔡絲婷) said. “Wellcome has the best execution performance, but this was not recognized by the consumers. While many consumers gave Mastusei high scores, it is actually rather conservative in its performance, only slightly better than Pxmart.”
The organization said that Wellcome was the first to sell “vegetables with identification labels,” starting this month, at 265 branches across the nation, and plans to sell only vegetables with traceability information by 2016.
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
LIKE FAMILY: People now treat dogs and cats as family members. They receive the same medical treatments and tests as humans do, a veterinary association official said The number of pet dogs and cats in Taiwan has officially outnumbered the number of human newborns last year, data from the Ministry of Agriculture’s pet registration information system showed. As of last year, Taiwan had 94,544 registered pet dogs and 137,652 pet cats, the data showed. By contrast, 135,571 babies were born last year. Demand for medical care for pet animals has also risen. As of Feb. 29, there were 5,773 veterinarians in Taiwan, 3,993 of whom were for pet animals, statistics from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency showed. In 2022, the nation had 3,077 pediatricians. As of last
XINJIANG: Officials are conducting a report into amending an existing law or to enact a special law to prohibit goods using forced labor Taiwan is mulling an amendment prohibiting the importation of goods using forced labor, similar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) passed by the US Congress in 2021 that imposed limits on goods produced using forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. A government official who wished to remain anonymous said yesterday that as the US customs law explicitly prohibits the importation of goods made using forced labor, in 2021 it passed the specialized UFLPA to limit the importation of cotton and other goods from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region. Taiwan does not have the legal basis to prohibit the importation of goods