January 4, 2013

About 99.8% of Taiwan's beef products are clearly labelled with their country of origin as required by law.    

Premier Sean Chen said Thursday (Dec 27) that the Department of Health officials have inspected retail outlets and restaurants and given non-compliant businesses a deadline to get in line with the labelling regulation. The regulation was introduced in September last year with regard to domestic and imported beef, after Taiwan lifted a ban on US beef products containing traces of ractopamine to allow a maximum 10 parts per billion of the leanness-enhancing livestock drug.

Chen said Taiwan should continue to adhere strictly to the labelling rule, which was intended to allow consumers to decide for themselves whether to buy US beef. By so doing, Taiwan may be able to go a step further and ask the US to establish a traceability system for specific products, including additives in food and animal feed, the premier said.

The US currently does not have a comprehensive traceability system, he noted. Currently, the output value of domestic agriculture products that are listed on Taiwan's food traceability system is only 1.5% of the total, or TWD3.9 billion (US$134.5 million), according to Chen.