Japanese Representative to Taiwan Mikio Numata yesterday expressed regret over the referendum vote in favor of maintaining an import ban on agricultural products and food from five Japanese prefectures.
The issue was politicized, Numata said in a statement, adding that Taiwan and Japan should work together to prevent the referendum result from harming ties and economic exchanges.
“We will continue to do our best to convince friends in Taiwan of the safety of Japanese food products and we sincerely hope that the ban will be lifted soon,” Numata said.
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT)-initiated referendum asked voters if they agreed that the government should maintain the ban on imports of agricultural products and food from areas in Japan imposed after the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear disaster of March 2011, including Fukushima, Ibaraki, Gunma, Tochigi and Chiba prefectures.
Of the nearly 10 million valid votes cast, 78 percent were in favor of continuing the ban (7,791,856), while 22 percent were against it (2,231,425).
The ban was imposed during the administration of former president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) of the KMT.
It tightened restrictions in 2015 — drawing strong criticism from the Japanese government — when products from those prefectures were discovered on store shelves.
After taking office on May 20, 2016, President Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) administration said it would consider lifting the ban on food imports from all but Fukushima Prefecture, but the idea met with widespread opposition.
The Ministry of Health and Welfare would maintain the ban, given the results of the referendum, Executive Yuan spokeswoman Kolas Yotaka said.
“The government’s stance on the issue remains unchanged: We will safeguard the health of Taiwanese by making sure that imported foods are safe to eat,” she said.
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:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater