The Executive Yuan yesterday approved a proposal to lift a ban on importing Canadian beef from cattle older than 30 months.
The new rules are to take effect immediately, Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Director Wu Shou-mei (吳秀梅) told a news conference.
Taiwan previously only imported Canadian beef from cattle under 30 months old. It lifted similar restrictions on imports of US beef from cattle over the age of 30 months on Jan. 1, 2021.
Photo: Tsai Shu-yuan, Taipei Times
Due to the relatively long incubation period of mad cow disease, cows aged under 30 months are generally thought to be at lower risk of having the disease.
The FDA on April 27 issued a notice on lifting the ban and commenced a 30-day public comment period before the Cabinet approved the proposal.
However, Taiwan will still ban specific risk materials for Canadian beef imports, including the brain, eyes and spinal cord, among other parts, Wu added.
After the ban is lifted, Taiwan would randomly select batches of imports for inspection at a rate of 2 to 10 percent, she said.
Imported products that fail an inspection would be destroyed or returned, and if the number of violations becomes concerning, such imports would be subject to “enhanced random inspections” or “batch-by-batch checks,” Wu added.
Currently, 55 countries, including the US, the UK and Japan, allow imports of Canadian beef, Cabinet spokesman Lin Tze-luen (林子倫) told the news conference.
The move to allow imports of Canadian beef from cattle over the age of 30 months came after a government source said that the ban could be a major stumbling block between Ottawa and Taipei, as they negotiate a deal to encourage two-way investment, called the Foreign Investment Promotion and Protection Agreement.
The source said progress on reaching a deal was going “very smoothly” until negotiations turned to the 30-month slaughter-age limit.
The source added that the government was hopeful that Canada would support Taiwan’s accession to the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP).
The Consumers’ Foundation in a news release yesterday called for a boycott of Canadian beef, saying the North American nation’s last reported case of mad cow disease was fairly recent and it has not clarified feed contamination concerns.
When Ottawa reported a case of mad cow disease in December 2021, South Korea, China and the Philippines stopped importing Canadian beef, it said, opposing the government’s decision to open imports.
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