Fierce battle over ractopamine pork in the Legislative Yuan: the billions in funding and the origin labeling mark raise many problems; the opposition party blasts: domestic pork cannot contain ractopamine, yet they want our people to eat it!

With 85 days to go before ractopamine-containing American pork arrives in Taiwan, the accompanying policies have still never been clearly explained. Chen Chi-chung, chairman of the Council of Agriculture, appeared today for questioning at the Economics Committee of the Legislative Yuan, where a total of 36 lawmakers from both the opposition and ruling parties took turns interrogating him, with fierce fire, and the questioning lasted as long as ten hours. Lawmakers of all parties demanded that the Council of Agriculture must explain the supporting measures in detail, especially how the billions in the fund will be allocated, and how the Taiwan pork identification mark should be implemented.

Chen Chi-chung said that the proportion of people who will eat ractopamine pork is very low, and that after Japan and South Korea opened up imports of ractopamine pork, American pork imports fell in both of the first two years. The Council of Agriculture has already obtained the list of imported meat traders for future tracing; as for the Taiwan pork identification mark, it will discuss follow-up inspection methods with the Central Livestock Production Association soon.

Under repeated questioning by the lawmakers, the Council of Agriculture finally announced the allocation of the billions in funding. The funding is set out over four years, totaling 12.96 billion yuan. In the first year next year, 3.191 billion yuan will be used, of which "modernization of slaughterhouses and upgrading of the meat cold chain" takes the largest share, accounting for 1.06 billion yuan.