[Commentary] Forcing in ractopamine pork, and now forcing herbicide spraying on red beans? The Council of Agriculture makes decisions in closed-door meetings, disregarding the spirit of democracy

The ractopamine pork that the EU won't eat, the government insists on importing; the herbicide banned by the EU, the government insists on spraying on red beans as a defoliant? The controversy over opening up the herbicide "glufosinate" as a defoliant for red beans has continued from early June this year to now. Initially, the Council of Agriculture claimed it was acting out of consideration for farmers' needs and insisted on opening it up, but as soon as the news broke, it was opposed by farmers' associations in red bean-producing areas, consumer groups, and senior pesticide experts. Later, the Council of Agriculture said it would invite the public to leave comments on "Zhong Kai Jiang," claiming it wanted to broadly gather public opinion, but when the opposing opinions in the comments were overwhelmingly one-sided, the Council of Agriculture again set them aside and ignored them.

This bad show has dragged on for six months, and the red beans are already facing harvest. Today the Council of Agriculture held a "surprise" "communication" meeting, and yet for this policy that is claimed to be drafted in response to farmers' needs, not a single representative from the farmers' associations in the main red bean-producing areas was invited, and the experts who argue that "glufosinate" has health risk concerns and should not be opened up also did not attend. The media could not enter to report on this meeting, and citizens who wanted to understand the meeting's contents through the internet also could not get in.

This incident, like a replay of "forcing in ractopamine pork" - "forcing herbicide spraying on red beans as a defoliant" - despite the rising tide of opposition from outside, the Council of Agriculture still uses the wording "just providing another option" and maintains a tough stance. If, as the government says, ractopamine pork imports are to exchange for Taiwan's national interests, then what interest is forcefully promoting herbicide spraying on red beans for? The Council of Agriculture has a responsibility to honestly explain this clearly to farmers and consumers.

Opening up herbicides for red bean harvest, the Council of Agriculture goes against the global trend and reverses course, hurting farmers and hurting the industry

In Taiwan, most red bean fields are harvested by combine harvesters. To make the drying degree of red bean plants uniform and facilitate harvesting, before harvest farmers use chemicals recommended by the government to speed up drying. For example, sodium chlorate and nonanoic acid are currently the two most common chemicals. And to encourage farmers to practice friendly cultivation, as long as no chemical agents at all are used to harvest red beans, the government gives farmers a "no defoliant application incentive," which in previous years was 6,500 yuan per hectare and has been raised to 10,000 yuan starting this year.

The original path was to foster the sound development of the domestic red bean industry and respond to consumers' demand for food safety, but in the middle of this year a fork suddenly opened up. On May 20, at the request of the Council of Agriculture, the Ministry of Health and Welfare added the herbicide "glufosinate" as a red bean defoliant, with a tolerance of 2ppm. As soon as the news came out, not only were consumers in an uproar, but the first to oppose it were actually the farmers' associations in red bean-producing areas, including those in Wandan, Xinyuan, Kanding, and Pingtung City in Pingtung, as well as Meinong and Daliao in Kaohsiung, all of which urged the Council of Agriculture not to open up herbicide-based red bean harvesting, so as to truly improve the quality of domestic red beans and maintain the normal development of the industry.

From June 4 this year to now, this publication has conducted a global investigation and found that the EU considers "glufosinate" toxic and has banned it, and exclusively obtained statements from the European Commission and the Swedish Chemicals Agency clearly stating that "Not Approved" in the regulations is equivalent to "Ban." To date, this publication has successively published 14 related news reports. In addition to fully presenting the true situation at red bean production sites and faithfully recording the positions of farmers and farmers' associations, 5 of these reports also describe in exhaustive detail the reproductive toxicity and neurotoxicity risks of the herbicide "glufosinate," and include first-hand interviews with officials from multiple European countries, EU competent authorities, and experts, explaining in detail the process by which "glufosinate" was banned by the EU.

France, the first country to announce a ban, stated clearly in August 2017 through its Agency for Food, Environmental and Occupational Health & Safety (ANSES): "Glufosinate poses an excessively high health risk to sprayers; even workers entering the fields after application, nearby residents, and children are exposed to risk. In addition, harm to mammals in the fields cannot be ruled out, and the residue data for crops such as green beans, grapes, potatoes, citrus, and cherries are also insufficient."

By contrast, our Council of Agriculture from beginning to end, after first claiming that the EU had not banned it, later kept stubbornly arguing around the point that as long as the word "ban" was not present it did not count as a ban. In the face of calls by farmers' association general managers for public discussion, the Council of Agriculture turned a deaf ear and was willing only to go to the countryside to individually smooth things over one by one, but several farmers' associations in the largest producing areas did not accept it.

The Council of Agriculture went to the countryside several times to conduct anonymous questionnaires with farmers and claimed that nearly 50 percent of farmers hoped to open up the use of "glufosinate," which was also mocked by a farmers' association general manager: I oppose it under my own name, and you ignore me, yet you say you respect people who do not give their names?

A closed-door risk communication meeting, the road to democracy grows ever more perilous

The Council of Agriculture held an expert meeting on July 6, and based on briefings provided by the Bureau of Animal and Plant Health Inspection and Quarantine and the Taiwan Agricultural Chemicals and Toxic Substances Research Institute, concluded that "there is a problem with risk communication," meaning "there is no problem with the risk, it is communication that has a problem." From all the above actions of the Council of Agriculture, it is clear that there is indeed a problem with communication, but is there no problem with the risk? All sectors do not see it that way.

Tseng Te-tsu, emeritus professor in the Department of Plant Pathology at National Chung Hsing University, wrote five articles in succession expressing opposition to the herbicide "glufosinate" being used as a red bean defoliant; Kaohsiung red bean farmers Hsiao Cheng-lung and Chu Cheng-fu also submitted signed articles to the media, earnestly requesting that the Council of Agriculture protect domestic red beans and by no means open up the herbicide.

This publication conducted a special interview with the French scholar who performed mouse experiments on glufosinate, and the scholar also believes that the Taiwanese government's interpretation of toxicity greatly underestimates glufosinate's risk to neurodevelopment.