The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) yesterday urged the public to sign the Consumers’ Foundation’s online petition protesting the government’s policy to allow imports of US pork products containing traces of ractopamine.
Yesterday marked one month until US pork containing traces of the drug would be allowed to enter Taiwan and more than three months since President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) announced the policy on Aug. 28, KMT Culture and Communications Committee director-general Alicia Wang (王育敏) said at a news conference in Taipei.
“In the past three months, people have been outraged, but they have also felt helpless,” Wang said.
The government has “ignored public opinion,” she said, adding that despite repeated calls for labels indicating whether a product contains ractopamine, the government has not implemented such a policy.
The lack of labels would leave people with “no option,” because after Jan. 1 they would be unable to tell whether a pork dish, such as meatballs, contains traces of the feed additive, she added.
By only requiring country of origin labeling, the government is “delegating the management of food safety to the public,” the KMT said.
Although the government has banned schools from serving pork with ractopamine traces, it has refused to amend the School Health Act (學校衛生法), without which food safety cannot be guaranteed on campuses, it said.
Only penalties prescribed by law would deter businesses from “taking chances” with school meals, but the Democratic Progressive Party caucus has blocked a proposed amendment and only agreed to revisions to the Ministry of Education’s contract for the procurement of meals, it added.
Wang questioned whether the government would have the resources to perform batch-by-batch inspections of pork imports at the border as it has promised.
Tsai turning down an invitation from KMT Chairman Johnny Chiang (江啟臣) to debate US pork imports was an attempt to “escape supervision by public opinion,” she said, adding that it would only serve to deepen people’s doubts.
Despite a protest on Nov. 22 at which thousands of people voiced their opposition to US pork imports in front of the Presidential Office Building in Taipei, the Tsai administration has “pretended not to hear,” KMT Organizational Development Committee director-general Lee Che-hua (李哲華) said.
As the Central Election Commission has not allowed the KMT to begin collecting a second round of signatures for a petition for a referendum on the issue, the KMT urges its supporters to sign the Consumers’ Foundation’s petition, he said.
The petition had collected more than 164,000 signatures as of yesterday, the KMT said.
The National Alliance of Presidents of Parents’ Associations, the Homemakers United Foundation, the John Tung Foundation and the Swine Association are among the groups that have backed the petition.
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