Nearly 60 percent of people said the government should postpone plans to allow imports of US pork containing ractopamine due to possible changes in US foreign policy following the US presidential election, a survey released yesterday by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) showed.
The survey asked: “If US President Donald Trump loses the election, some people argue that US foreign policy will be readjusted, and government officials will also be replaced, and that Taiwan should postpone allowing imports of pork treated with ractopamine on Jan. 11 next year. Do you agree or disagree with this view?”
Of the respondents, 57.5 percent agreed with the view, while 19.5 percent disagreed and 23 percent said they did not know, the KMT said.
Photo: CNA
Tsai on Aug. 28 announced that Taiwan would ease restrictions on imports of US pork containing traces of the animal feed additive, as well as beef from cattle aged 30 months or older. The policy is expected to take effect on Jan. 1.
The survey results showed that 48.2 percent of respondents who identified as pan-green camp supporters agreed that the government should postpone plans to allow the imports.
“The numbers show that the voice of the people has surpassed the blue-green divide,” the KMT said in a statement, urging President Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) administration to postpone the policy.
“We hope that President Tsai will listen to the voice of the people,” KMT Culture and Communications Committee director-general Alicia Wang (王育敏) told a news conference at the KMT headquarters in Taipei.
KMT Deputy Secretary-General Huang Kwei-bo (黃奎博) said it was “odd” that the DPP has called the KMT “anti-US” for its opposition to allowing imports of US pork containing ractopamine.
Huang asked whether maintaining exchanges with the US meant that Taiwan must agree with it on all matters.
The KMT does not accept the addition of ractopamine in pork, he said, adding that about 170 countries do not allow imports of meat treated with the drug.
According to the DPP’s logic, those countries are “anti-US,” he added.
The survey, conducted on Thursday and Friday last week, collected 916 valid samples through telephone interviews and had a margin of error of 3.2 percentage points, the KMT said.
DPP spokeswoman Yen Juo-fang (顏若芳) said that the survey was politically motivated.
The KMT’s poll was conducted before the end of the US presidential election, and before US president-elect Joe Biden accepted his victory on Sunday, she said.
The poll’s question was leading, and an attempt to sway public opinion, she added.
Additional reporting by Yang Chun-hui
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