Eat lean meat, not lean meat powder: UN says the right to good food is a basic right of the people

Text by Zhuang Shuhua (Livelihood Reconstruction Service Center, Gaoshu Township, Pingtung County) Photography by Jiang Jiaping

Editor's note: This article is part of the "Smallholder Farming and Sustainable Taiwan" lecture series. NewsMarket will publish the content records of each lecture one after another, and we also invite everyone to come to the venue to exchange views with the speakers. For lecture-related information, please see here. The next session is on 6/22 (Fri) 1900-2100 at Taipei Wenshan Community College, and the speaker is Zhang Weiqi, assistant professor in the Department of Environmental and Cultural Resources at National Hsinchu University of Education.

This article is based on physician Su Weishuo's talk "Eat Lean Meat, Not Lean Meat Powder - A Brief Discussion of the Right to Good Food Autonomy," given at the Livelihood Reconstruction Service Center in Gaoshu Township, Pingtung County. The following content is dictated by Dr. Su and organized by Zhuang Shuhua. To read other articles in this series, please see the links at the end of the article.

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Food and Good Food

A new human right of the twenty-first century - the right to safe and good food.

The UN Food and Agriculture Organization and the Committee on Food Development both have as their purpose advocating that everyone has the right to eat safe food of good quality. The government should include the right to good food among the people's basic human rights; the government must guarantee citizens the right to eat safe, good-quality food in order to safeguard the health of the people. Citizens, meanwhile, are individuals who actively exercise the right to govern, and have the duty to supervise and urge the government to properly manage the country.

The Impact of Lean Meat Powder on Animals and Humans

When it comes to lean meat powder, we should carefully consider two questions. First, does lean meat powder cause problems for animals? Second, after pork and beef containing lean meat powder are provided for people to eat, will they have an impact on the human body? As a doctor, this is a question that I and all our citizens should pay attention to and care about together.

Conclusions and Recommendations

(1) Ractopamine is a type of lean meat powder, and animal experiments allow the reasonable inference that it carries many harmful risks to the human body.

(2) The government should immediately instruct the Animal Science Research Institute under the Council of Agriculture to cooperate with National Taiwan University and other universities and colleges to conduct multi-system toxicological research on ractopamine, especially research on the brain and reproductive system and hormone-like effects.

(3) The Legislative Yuan should establish risk analysis methods.

(4) After the EU lost its case at the WTO, it signed an agreement with the United States and still bans the use of hormones in American beef. The Ministry of Economic Affairs and the Department of Health should send a delegation to Europe for study and bring back the 17 studies on ractopamine conducted by the EU.

Questions and Discussion

Q1: Is Taiwanese pork more toxic?

A: Foreign media reports say that American beef and pork only use ractopamine, but Taiwanese pork has been found to contain clenbuterol and salbutamol, both of which are more toxic than ractopamine, so Taiwanese pork is more toxic. Is that really so? Not necessarily. At present, Taiwan's current laws still completely ban the use of lean meat powder, and this year no pork containing lean meat powder has been detected. The pork reported as having problems was actually detected last year, and it came from the same farm. The Department of Health has already stepped in to handle it, so we actually do not need to worry too much about the quality of domestic pork.

Q2: School nutritional lunches and military meals have become the best place for unsold products on the Taiwan market to be disposed of, and whether lean meat powder meat products are being eaten is very worrying.

A: This is indeed a serious problem. Students and our military personnel are both at an important stage of development and growth, and they are also our next generation. Yet Taiwan's current situation is to dump unsold agricultural products from the market relentlessly into military camps and schools, requiring students and military personnel to work hard to consume these unsold crops.

Schools and military camps can be regarded as a fixed market. The government should establish a system for this fixed market to regulate and control the sources of goods supplied for nutritional lunches and to the military, set higher inspection standards, and keep prices stable or guaranteed. In this way, farmers can be encouraged to grow agricultural products that are highly nutritious and use less pesticide, in the hope of improving the current bad practices in agricultural production. These goals require our citizens to promote them together.

Series Articles

• Japan's Local Production for Local Consumption and Food and Agriculture Education (Part 2): Guard the fields well, and the fields will protect the people
• Japan's Local Production for Local Consumption and Food and Agriculture Education (Part 1): Right, then let's sell leaves
• From Lean Meat Powder American Beef to Free Trade (Part 1)
• From Lean Meat Powder American Beef to Free Trade (Part 2)