The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) caucus will mobilize a massive campaign against the Department of Health (DOH) if the government agrees to a full opening to US beef products, the DPP caucus said yesterday.
DPP Legislator Wang Sing-nan (王幸男) lambasted the government ahead of a possible announcement lifting the ban on US meat from cattle more than 30 months old and beef with bones, saying such an action would jeopardize public health in Taiwan.
Under DPP rule, the government agreed to US beef imports but on the strict condition that the meat be from cattle younger than 30 months of age, and beef with bones was barred when a case of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), or mad cow disease was discovered in 2005.
On Tuesday, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said it was optimistic that US beef would gain full access to the Taiwan market “sometime this year,” prompting the media to speculate the ban would be lifted by the end of this month or early next month.
Wang said the government should look at the public angst that arose in South Korea and Japan when those two countries opened their borders to US beef.
Gao Jyh-peng (高志鵬), another DPP lawmaker questioned whether the Ma administration had conceded to US pressure on beef in exchange for his transit stops on US soil and urged the public to stand united in boycotting US beef.
The DPP said it plans to mobilize the public to launch a “one person, one call” campaign to let the DOH know the public’s objection to lifting the ban.
Former president Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) mention of Taiwan’s official name during a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) on Wednesday was likely a deliberate political play, academics said. “As I see it, it was intentional,” National Chengchi University Graduate Institute of East Asian Studies professor Wang Hsin-hsien (王信賢) said of Ma’s initial use of the “Republic of China” (ROC) to refer to the wider concept of “the Chinese nation.” Ma quickly corrected himself, and his office later described his use of the two similar-sounding yet politically distinct terms as “purely a gaffe.” Given Ma was reading from a script, the supposed slipup
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,
The bodies of two individuals were recovered and three additional bodies were discovered on the Shakadang Trail (砂卡礑) in Taroko National Park, eight days after the devastating earthquake in Hualien County, search-and-rescue personnel said. The rescuers reported that they retrieved the bodies of a man and a girl, suspected to be the father and daughter from the Yu (游) family, 500m from the entrance of the trail on Wednesday. The rescue team added that despite the discovery of the two bodies on Friday last week, they had been unable to retrieve them until Wednesday due to the heavy equipment needed to lift