The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) yesterday criticized what it said was the government’s “domineering” stance on the importation of pork products containing traces of the animal feed additive ractopamine.
President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) on Aug. 28 announced that the government would ease restrictions on imports of US pork containing the leanness-enhancing drug, as well as beef from cattle aged 30 months or older.
The policy is expected to take effect on Jan. 1.
“To ensure that US pork with leanness-enhancing agents can successfully come to Taiwan on Jan. 1, the entire Tsai administration is now blocking everything,” KMT Culture and Communications Committee chairwoman Alicia Wang (王育敏) told a news conference at the party’s headquarters in Taipei.
Tsai’s administration has blocked legislative proposals on food safety raised by opposition parties, as well as those put forward by Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) lawmakers, Wang said.
“What is even worse is that it is even blocking local governments’ right of autonomy,” she said.
While several local governments have revised their food-safety ordinances to set a “zero detection” policy on ractopamine, as well as penalties, the central government sent a letter requesting that they amend those regulations, the KMT said in a statement.
The DPP administration is disregarding local autonomy and abusing its authority by “blocking the democratic value of a balance of power between the central and local [governments], and blocking the last line of defense in protecting public health,” it said.
Wang called the request “dictatorial.”
Tsai once said that she was “best at communicating,” but on the US pork import issue, the president “does not want to do any communicating,” Wang said.
The KMT would urge members of the public to join street protests against the administration’s “domineering” and “deceptive” ways, she said.
KMT Chairman Johnny Chiang (江啟臣) on Wednesday announced that party members would join with representatives of other groups in protests on Nov. 22 to try to “block the incorrect policy.”
Meanwhile, KMT Taipei City Councilor Wang Hung-wei (王鴻薇), who is also deputy chairwoman of the KMT committee, yesterday called on Council of Agriculture Minister Chen Chi-chung (陳吉仲) to apologize for saying on Wednesday that zero detection” policies would lead to two-thirds of steakhouses closing.
Additional reporting by Shih Hsiao-kuang
Considering that most countries issue more than five denominations of banknotes, the central bank has decided to redesign all five denominations, the bank said as it prepares for the first major overhaul of the banknotes in more than 24 years. Central bank Governor Yang Chin-lung (楊金龍) is expected to report to the Legislative Yuan today on the bank’s operations and the redesign’s progress. The bank in a report sent to the legislature ahead of today’s meeting said it had commissioned a survey on the public’s preferences. Survey results showed that NT$100 and NT$1,000 banknotes are the most commonly used, while NT$200 and NT$2,000
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) yesterday reported the first case of a new COVID-19 subvariant — BA.3.2 — in a 10-year-old Singaporean girl who had a fever upon arrival in Taiwan and tested positive for the disease. The girl left Taiwan on March 20 and the case did not have a direct impact on the local community, it said. The WHO added the BA.3.2 strain to its list of Variants Under Monitoring in December last year, but this was the first imported case of the COVID-19 variant in Taiwan, CDC Deputy Director-General Lin Ming-cheng (林明誠) said. The girl arrived in Taiwan on
South Korea is planning to revise its controversial electronic arrival card, a step Taiwanese officials said prompted them to hold off on planned retaliatory measures, a South Korean media report said yesterday. A Yonhap News Agency report said that the South Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs is planning to remove the “previous departure place” and “next destination” fields from its e-arrival card system. The plan, reached after interagency consultations, is under review and aims to simplify entry procedures and align the electronic form with the paper version, a South Korean ministry official said. The fields — which appeared only on the electronic form
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) is suspending retaliation measures against South Korea that were set to take effect tomorrow, after Seoul said it is updating its e-arrival system, MOFA said today. The measures were to be a new round of retaliation after Taiwan on March 1 changed South Korea's designation on government-issued alien resident certificates held by South Korean nationals to "South Korea” from the "Republic of Korea," the country’s official name. The move came after months of protests to Seoul over its listing of Taiwan as "China (Taiwan)" in dropdown menus on its new online immigration entry system. MOFA last week
RSS