In south Taiwan’s pig-producing heartland, the government’s contentious decision to ease restrictions on imports of US pork is rankling some producers and dividing families.
President Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) decision in August to allow imports of US pork containing traces of ractopamine — an additive that enhances leanness, but is banned in the EU and China — has roiled the nation’s politics.
In Pingtung County, a major pork-producing area, pig farmer Wu Jung-en, 63, said that he was “furious and shocked” when he heard the news.
Photo: Ann Wang, Reuters
“I am quite worried this will make people fear pork, so maybe they will not eat it anymore. It is a terrible thing for us,” said Wu, who has a passel of about 10,000 hogs.
However, his 32-year-old son Wu Hung-chi does not see it that way.
“I have told my friends that if they are scared, then go and buy warm-body pork,” said Wu Hung-chi, referring to meat eaten shortly after slaughter, rather than frozen.
“It is a free market. If it is no good it will be phased out. Nobody is forcing you to eat it,” he added.
That is an argument the government makes, saying its decision brings Taiwan in line with international practice.
Taipei is also hoping the move eases the way for a free-trade deal with Washington.
The main opposition Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) opposes the move on safety grounds, holding noisy protests, and even on one occasion flinging pig guts in the Legislative Yuan.
Pork is the nation’s most popular meat, with the average person consuming almost 40kg annually.
Most of the pork consumed is domestically reared, with only about 1 percent currently coming from the US.
Teng Hung-chao, a pork farmer for more than three decades who runs an agricultural sales cooperative in Pingtung, said that he was also angered by the move, fearing the impact at home.
“The United States is a major pork producer that is quite competitive, so imports will be cost effective, but it cannot be forced on us, bringing chaos to our industry and taking it down,” Teng said.
HORMUZ ISSUE: The US president said he expected crude prices to drop at the end of the war, which he called a ‘minor excursion’ that could continue ‘for a little while’ The United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Kuwait started reducing oil production, as the near-closure of the crucial Strait of Hormuz ripples through energy markets and affects global supply. Abu Dhabi National Oil Co (ADNOC) is “managing offshore production levels to address storage requirements,” the company said in a statement, without giving details. Kuwait Petroleum Corp said it was lowering production at its oil fields and refineries after “Iranian threats against safe passage of ships through the Strait of Hormuz.” The war in the Middle East has all but closed Hormuz, the narrow waterway linking the Persian Gulf to the open seas,
Apple Inc increased iPhone production in India by about 53 percent last year and now makes a quarter of its marquee devices there, reflecting the US company’s efforts to avoid tariffs on China. The company assembled about 55 million iPhones in India last year, up from 36 million a year earlier, people familiar with the matter said, asking not to be named because the numbers aren’t public. Apple makes about 220 million to 230 million iPhones a year globally, with India’s share of the total increasing rapidly. Apple has accelerated its expansion in the world’s most populous country in recent years, bolstered
HEADWINDS: The company said it expects its computer business, as well as consumer electronics and communications segments to see revenue declines due to seasonality Pegatron Corp (和碩) yesterday said it aims to grow its artificial intelligence (AI) server revenue more than 10-fold this year from last year, driven by orders from neocloud solutions clients and large cloud service providers. The electronics manufacturing service provider said AI server revenue growth would be driven primarily by the Nvidia Corp GB300 server platform. Server shipments are expected to increase each quarter this year, with the second half likely to outperform the first half, it said. The AI server market is expected to broaden this year as more inference applications emerge, which would drive demand for system-on-chip, application-specific integrated circuits
PROJECTION: TSMC said it expects strong growth this year, with revenue in US dollars projected to grow by about 30 percent, outperforming the industry Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday reported consolidated sales last month reached NT$317.66 billion (US$9.98 billion), the highest ever for the month of February, driven by robust demand for chips built using the company’s advanced 3-nanometer (3nm) process. Last month’s figure was up 22.2 percent from a year earlier, but fell 20.8 percent from January, the world’s largest contract chipmaker said in a statement. For the first two months of the year, TSMC posted cumulative sales of NT$718.91 billion, up 29.9 percent from a year earlier. Analysts attributed the growth to sustained global demand for artificial intelligence (AI) products
RSS