The Council of Agriculture on Wednesday said Taiwanese exporters had been unfairly inconvenienced by China’s rejection of shipments that do not adhere to strictly enforced yet unclear customs regulations.
Deputy head of the council’s Department of International Affairs Lin Chih-hung (林志鴻) said that Beijing had treated Taiwanese exporters with undue harshness.
China was practicing double standards by giving non-Taiwanese exporters a more lenient deadline to meet new rules, but requiring firms in Taiwan to submit paper copies of documentation instead of online, Lin said.
Photo: CNA
“Wording,” “mistakes in production licenses” and “mistakes in labeling the place of origin” were the three most common reasons cited by Chinese customs officials when rejecting Taiwanese exports, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) said.
The government over the past week found that China had halted imports of squid, Pacific saury, fourfinger threadfin, kaoliang liquor, Taiwan Beer and a range of nonalcoholic beverages.
The import suspensions followed the halting of pastry shipments, which started before late September.
Council officials have previously said that two of the rejected seafood exporters resubmitted customs documentation in July and August, but had not heard from China’s General Administration of Customs since.
China said it had implemented suspensions due to exporters’ failure to comply with customs registration requirements that came into force last year.
When the FDA asked China how to correct the issues, it did not respond, said Cheng Wei-chih (鄭維智), deputy head of the FDA’s Food Safety Division.
The FDA therefore did not know what had caused the issues raised by China, Cheng said.
Meanwhile, Minister of Health and Welfare Hsueh Jui-yuan (薛瑞元) said that a requirement that exporters must provide the recipe for their products is applied only to Taiwanese bakeries.
The FDA said on Tuesday that exporters were required to disclose the recipe for their products if they wanted to sell them in China.
Asked if the FDA had helped the 31 exporters that registered successfully through China’s “recommended registration” channel to deliver their recipe to China, Hsueh said that only bakeries needed to provide their formula, and the exporters in question were not bakeries.
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