Minister of Transportation and Communications Yeh Kuang-shih’s (葉匡時) remarks about cheap food products sparked criticism from netizens, with some saying the minister is trying to blame other people.
When asked on Thursday if he was concerned that the food safety crisis caused by the use of recycled waste oil in processed food might affect the nation’s tourism industry, Yeh said that tourists from China, Hong Kong and Macao might be discouraged from visiting Taiwan.
Yeh said the root of the food safety problem was that people prefer to buy cheap food. He said he wanted to write a letter to the writer Liu Ka-shiang (劉克襄), who has wriiten to the Chinese-language Apple Daily opinion page declaring he was against Taiwanese restaurant chain Formosa Chang’s decision to raise the price of its food.
“I want to tell him [Liu] that I identify with his ideal of living a simple life. However, if you put too much emphasis on food being cheap, it causes restaurants to cut costs and disrupts the supply chain,” Yeh said, adding the nation promotes night markets too much. In response, Liu said the problem is not cheap food, but the conscience of corporations producing food and the government’s management.
Liu said that many food manufacturers implicated in this crisis were reputable companies, whose products are not necessarily cheap. Liu also said that in his opinion night markets should not only attract visitors by selling cheap food.
However, Liu said he does not think there is a correlation between food being cheap and the use of recycled waste oil.
The disagreement over the root cause of the food safety crisis between Liu and Yeh also stirred up heated online discussions.
“Do the poor deserve to be poisoned by the food they eat? ” one netizen asked.
Others said that Yeh should mind his own business, particularly over problems with the freeway’s electronic toll collection system.
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