March 9, 2012

Taiwan may inspect all beef imports

Taiwan is planning to check all meat imports for ractopamine and to initiate stricter rules for the labelling of point-of-origin for meat products, Health Minister Chiu Wen-ta said Thursday (Mar 7).

Chiu said when interviewed by the media at the Legislative Yuan that day that the government will work toward checking every batch of beef imports.

Chiu's remark came amid a heated debate in Taiwan over the Taiwanese government's leaning toward conditionally easing the ban on US beef imports containing ractopamine, a leanness-enhancing feed additive banned by Taiwan but allowed in the US.

However, Chiu said that since the planned measure might be construed as an unfair trade measure, the Department of Health will notify the World Trade Organization and Taiwan's trade partners about the plan before its implementation.

"If we check all imports from foreign countries, they are likely to check all our exports as well," Chiu pointed out.

He added that his department has already enhanced border controls on beef imports by raising the percentage of meat checked for banned substances.

While products brought in by four Taiwanese importers are now checked batch by batch, Chiu said 18 importers have seen the percentage of inspections of their meat imports raised to between 25% and 50% from the previous 5%.

The department, Chiu said, is currently considering raising the percentage to 100% if an importer is found to have violated food safety regulations.

Chiu added that it is common practice in the inspection of meat imports around the world to step up the frequency of random checks should the situation dictate.

Meanwhile, on the mandatory point-of-origin labelling proposed by the government as a condition for lifting the ban on the leanness-promoting drug ractopamine in beef, Chiu said 94.4% of these meat products already meet this requirement.