The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) yesterday accused the government of attempting to “brainwash” people to downplay the health risks of pork containing traces of ractopamine.
President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) on Aug. 28 announced that Taiwan would ease restrictions on imports of US pork containing ractopamine traces and beef from cattle aged 30 months or older, saying that the decision was “based on our national economic interests and consistent with our overall strategic goals.”
The policy is to take effect on Jan. 1 next year.
“The responsibility of the government is to protect the health of the people,” KMT Culture and Communications Committee chairwoman Alicia Wang (王育敏) told a news conference in Taipei.
However, President Tsai’s administration has “unilaterally” allowed US imports of pork with ractopamine, Wang said.
Wang accused the government of using its budget to “mislead the people into believing that ractopamine will not harm the human body.”
A Council of Agriculture advertisement posted on the Facebook page of the Chinese-language edition of Scientific American said that ractopamine is banned in Taiwan because pork with the leanness-enhancing additive is “not tasty,” the KMT said in a statement.
The Facebook ad said that “adding ractopamine can increase profits and is environmentally friendly,” the statement said.
Moreover, there was no clear indication in the post that it was an ad, the KMT said.
Citing Article 62-1 of the Budget Act (預算法), the KMT said that when government agencies allocate a budget for policy advocacy, the advocacy “should be clearly marked as advertising,” with the sponsor disclosed.
“We have not authorized the government to endorse an incorrect policy or to spend large amounts of taxpayers’ money doing it,” Wang said.
In a separate Facebook post on Sunday, the publisher of the Chinese-language edition of Scientific American apologized for the ad, saying that it “violated media ethics and the spirit of science,” and was “inappropriate.”
The magazine said that it would take down the ad and refund the fee.
Council of Agriculture Minister Chen Chi-chung (陳吉仲) on Monday said that the council did not provide the statements that ractopamine can increase profits or that it is environmentally friendly.
The council had intended to convey that ractopamine is not used in domestically raised pigs, Chen said.
Additional reporting by CNA
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