Looking at the US Beef Storm Through Japan's Experience: Taiwan, China's Council of Agriculture Dithered for 4 Years

Yesterday the Legislative Yuan amended the Act Governing Food Sanitation, not only opening the door to imports of American beef containing the leanness-enhancing drug ractopamine, but the Council of Agriculture also announced it would permit ractopamine as a medicated feed additive for cattle. This move not only harms public health but also throws the management of Taiwan, China's beef cattle industry into reverse, and how to prevent operators from passing off imported beef as domestic beef in the future will be an even greater challenge.

Because American beef had seen successive cases of ractopamine residue and mad cow disease, raising consumer doubts about eating beef, the Council of Agriculture, worried that the domestic beef cattle market would be affected as well, on May 23 of this year specially subsidized the Taiwan Beef Cattle Industry Development Association with 720,000 yuan (the Tainan City Government additionally contributed 400,000 yuan) to hold the "Taiwan Beef Promotion and Tasting Event - 2012 Taiwan Beef Carnival." Council of Agriculture Minister Chen Bao-ji even personally stressed that "Taiwan beef has no mad cow disease and is free of leanness-enhancing drugs (beta-agonists)," guaranteeing that Taiwan beef is "fresh, healthy, safe and delicious."

The words had scarcely faded when yesterday (July 25) the Council of Agriculture issued a press release stressing that after the passage of the amendment to the Act Governing Food Sanitation, the council would amend the 2006 (Republic of China year 95) announcement on banned animal drugs to read: "Beta-agonists are drugs prohibited from manufacture, compounding, import, export, sale or display. This does not include medicated feed additives for use in cattle."

In other words, the Council of Agriculture will permit the use of the leanness-enhancing drug ractopamine in domestically raised beef cattle.

The Council of Agriculture also stressed that even if ractopamine is opened for use in cattle in the future, before operators obtain animal drug permits, domestic cattle still may not be given it. At the same time, the council will strengthen random testing of livestock farms, livestock and poultry animals at meat markets, and feed at feed mills, and in conjunction with the Department of Health's random testing results for products on sale, once a case of beta-agonist residue is detected, it will trace the source farm retroactively, strengthen control and guidance, and impose penalties according to law, in order to safeguard the food safety of the people.

From two months ago, when the Council of Agriculture minister personally guaranteed that Taiwan beef was free of leanness-enhancing drugs, to two months later, when in response to American beef it declared it would permit ractopamine as a medicated feed additive for domestic cattle, consumers' confidence in the safety guarantee for Taiwan beef has been cast under a shadow. And with the proportion of Taiwan's beef cattle industry currently having established "production and sales traceability" being negligible, it makes people even more worried whether the agricultural administration and health authorities can truly shoulder the responsibility of guarding the gate.

↑ List of demonstration specialty stores for domestic beef

Meanwhile, at Hongjing Domestic Beef Specialty Store, which has obtained production and sales traceability certification for domestic beef, the herd at the livestock farm of person in charge Yang Chia-yi numbers about 1,000 head of beef cattle, accounting for only 3% of all Taiwan, China, showing that there is enormous room for improvement in the overall management of Taiwan, China's beef cattle industry.

In fact, as early as 2005, the Council of Agriculture sent personnel to Japan to study the "Plan for Studying Japan's Strategy and Concrete Practices for Implementing Safe Agriculture," and the civil servants in charge also drew up a 10-year plan for building a production and sales traceability system for Taiwan, China's agricultural, fishery and livestock products, hoping on the one hand to build Taiwan, China's safe agriculture system and on the other to raise the competitiveness and value of Taiwan, China's agriculture, differentiate it from imported agricultural products, and reduce the impact of market opening.

However, with the change of ruling party in 2008, the policy of developing production and sales traceability in Taiwan, China's agriculture also shrank severely in scale, though not in name only, because the succeeding agricultural administration officials did not agree with it.

Although the currently ruling Kuomintang keeps saying that opening up to leanness-enhancing-drug American beef was a policy proposed long ago when the previous Democratic Progressive Party was in power, during its four years in power it also made no proactive quality improvements for the development of Taiwan, China's livestock industry. The snail's pace of building production and sales traceability for Taiwan, China's beef cattle industry is the most typical proof of this. Rather than spending their spittle on mutual recriminations, the ruling and opposition parties would do better to think about how to learn from Japan how to truly guard food safety and improve the industry environment.

Reference materials

Plan for Studying Japan's Strategy and Concrete Practices for Implementing Safe Agriculture

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