By Shih Hsiu-chuan and Chris Wang / Staff Reporters
Fri, Mar 09, 2012 - Page 1
The government yesterday vowed not to allow pork imports containing the feed additive ractopamine, as Premier Sean Chen said there was no room for compromise on the pork issue for the sake of public health and the “interests of local pig husbandry.”
“I will not change my position on the principle that the permits for importing beef [containing traces of ractopamine] and pork are kept separate,” Chen told a press conference in the afternoon, as thousands of farmers staged a protest.
The principle was founded on two reasons — that most people in Taiwan eat more pork than beef and they also eat the internal organs of pigs, which tend to contain higher levels of residue, he said.
“When it comes to public health, maintaining the ban on pork imports is the principle I personally will not compromise on,” Chen said.
He said the decision was also made in the interest of the domestic hog industry.
“Today, hog farmers traveled to Taipei on 110 buses to protest. We fully understand their concerns. They appealed rationally and the Council of Agriculture will deliberate with caution the issues they raised,” Chen said.
Public health remains the top consideration, although the impact of maintaining the ban on beef imports containing traces of ractopamine on the nation’s external economic and trade relations cannot be ignored, he said.
“Concerns over economic and trade benefits did not take precedence over public health. If an allowable level of residue of ractopamine had ever been determined as unsafe, we wouldn’t have agreed to lift the ban, even if the benefits were enormous,” he said.
The WTO ruling in favor of the US and Canada against the EU’s ban on the import of hormone-treated beef from the US and Canada in 1998 also “served as an inspiration” to the government in its decision to lift the ban, Chen said.
“As a WTO member, we have the responsibility to abide by WTO-related rules,” he said.
Meanwhile, Council of Agriculture Minister Chen Bao-ji (陳保基) told the legislature he would not lift the ban on ractopamine during his term in office — a vow that lawmakers said he would eventually break under pressure from President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) and the US.
“Speaking from a scientific point of view, I would say the opening up of the drug is acceptable because the use of ractopamine as a feed additive poses no safety concerns,” the academic-turned-politician Chen Bao-ji said.
However, opposition lawmakers said the Cabinet’s sincerity and Chen Bao-ji’s pledges were in doubt, given that the former had betrayed a pledge on Feb. 24 not to lift the ban before the end of the legislative session.
US pig farmers would eventually ask for the same treatment, as would other WTO members, Taiwan Solidarity Union Legislator Hsu Chun-hsin (許忠信) said.
Once ractopamine is legalized, local farmers who find themselves at a disadvantage to imports from the US would begin using the additive, which would result in a full opening up to ractopamine, he said.
Citing statistics from the South Korean government, Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Kuan Bi-ling (管碧玲) said Seoul had had trouble cracking down on false labeling and smuggling since it opened its beef market to the US in 2008.
“With our government’s poor record of law enforcement in the past, the lifting of the ban on US beef containing ractopamine would be ‘an endless nightmare’ for us,” Kuan said.
Other lawmakers expressed concerns about the hasty decision, with Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislators Ting Shou-chung (丁守中) and Pan Wei-kang (潘維剛) proposing that the final assessment be postponed until after the meeting of the UN’s Codex Alimentarius Commission in July.
The commission would not necessarily reach a consensus in July, Food and Drug Administration Director-General Kang Jaw-jou (康照洲) said, adding that the US had provided scientific data for Taiwan to conduct further assessments.