The Department of Health (DOH) will set up a national nutrition foundation that will conduct a nutrition census and provide nutritional education, a health official said yesterday.
Director-General of the DOH's Bureau of Food Safety Cheng Huei-wen (鄭慧文) said that nutrition is a major indicator of a nation's progress and said the DOH will push for a national nutrition bill that would establish the basis for a nutrition foundation.
Cheng said the DOH has conducted a nutrition census six times since 1981. However, there have been disruptions due to a lack of funds, so the DOH has not been able to match its counterparts in the US and Japan, which have conducted continuous and comprehensive censuses every year.
Cheng said that the nation's nutrition census and education relies on stable financial support, which is why the DOH is now planning to collect 0.01 percent of the turnover of the country's food and nutritional product manufacturers to finance the foundation.
Cheng said the DOH had decided to adopt the premise of "those who use it should pay" -- the idea being that the food and nutrition product manufacturers will pass on their extra costs to consumers, so that it will actually be the public that has to pay for the foundation.
He said that based on the combined earnings of food manufacturers last year -- around NT$600 billion (US$18.4 billion) -- the DOH could collect NT$60 million a year, which he said will be enough to finance the program.
A continuous census on public nutrition is urgently needed, Cheng said, noting that it would allow the DOH to see the changes in public nutrition.
He said the bill would be ready for the Legislative Yuan to review next year.
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