Cattle farmers will team up with pig farmers and protest in Taipei if the government caves in to US pressure and drops its ban on ractopamine in imported US beef, a group of farmers said yesterday.
The Taiwan Beef Industry Progress Association plans to burn US flags and portraits of US President Barack Obama during a demonstration scheduled for later this month in Taipei, Tseng Chin-jui (曾進瑞) said on behalf of association director Liu San-ho (劉三和).
The association firmly opposes any policy that would allow the use of the controversial leanness-enhancing drug ractopamine.
The beef industry said if the Taiwanese market were opened to US beef containing the drug, the market would eventually be forced to accept even more US meat products.
“All the world, including the US itself, is going organic. Why do they want Taiwanese to eat US beef reared using ractopamine?” the association said.
Pig farmers originally planned the protest because they feared that allowing imports of US beef with ractopamine would pave the way for the drug’s presence in pork.
Hsu Kuai-sheng (許桂森), director of the Council of Agriculture’s husbandry division, visited swine farmers in Taoyuan, Hsinchu, and Miaoli counties and Greater Taichung yesterday to hear their opinions.
He said he would urge them to have confidence in the government.
The protest plans come amid speculation that the government is considering a plan to adopt a practice similar to Japan’s in which local farmers are banned from using ractopamine, but imports of US beef containing residue from the drug would be allowed.
A closed-door inter-ministerial meeting on beef imports took place on Friday, but no decision was made on whether the government would say “yes” to US beef containing ractopamine.
President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) reiterated yesterday that the government has not set a timetable for resolving the problem and is not currently partial to any particular solution.
“We will surely assess and research both public health consideration and our trade and economic interests, as well as inviting opinions from different fields. A decision will be made based on science, experience and facts,” Ma said.
Ma also reiterated that the government has not made any promises to Washington.
An essay competition jointly organized by a local writing society and a publisher affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) might have contravened the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例), the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said on Thursday. “In this case, the partner organization is clearly an agency under the CCP’s Fujian Provincial Committee,” MAC Deputy Minister and spokesperson Liang Wen-chieh (梁文傑) said at a news briefing in Taipei. “It also involves bringing Taiwanese students to China with all-expenses-paid arrangements to attend award ceremonies and camps,” Liang said. Those two “characteristics” are typically sufficient
A magnitude 5.9 earthquake that struck about 33km off the coast of Hualien City was the "main shock" in a series of quakes in the area, with aftershocks expected over the next three days, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Prior to the magnitude 5.9 quake shaking most of Taiwan at 6:53pm yesterday, six other earthquakes stronger than a magnitude of 4, starting with a magnitude 5.5 quake at 6:09pm, occurred in the area. CWA Seismological Center Director Wu Chien-fu (吳健富) confirmed that the quakes were all part of the same series and that the magnitude 5.5 temblor was
The brilliant blue waters, thick foliage and bucolic atmosphere on this seemingly idyllic archipelago deep in the Pacific Ocean belie the key role it now plays in a titanic geopolitical struggle. Palau is again on the front line as China, and the US and its allies prepare their forces in an intensifying contest for control over the Asia-Pacific region. The democratic nation of just 17,000 people hosts US-controlled airstrips and soon-to-be-completed radar installations that the US military describes as “critical” to monitoring vast swathes of water and airspace. It is also a key piece of the second island chain, a string of
The Central Weather Administration has issued a heat alert for southeastern Taiwan, warning of temperatures as high as 36°C today, while alerting some coastal areas of strong winds later in the day. Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門) and Pingtung County’s Neipu Township (內埔) are under an orange heat alert, which warns of temperatures as high as 36°C for three consecutive days, the CWA said, citing southwest winds. The heat would also extend to Tainan’s Nansi (楠西) and Yujing (玉井) districts, as well as Pingtung’s Gaoshu (高樹), Yanpu (鹽埔) and Majia (瑪家) townships, it said, forecasting highs of up to 36°C in those areas
RSS