May 10, 2012

Taiwan requests to check US beef production line

A group of Taiwanese health and agriculture authorities on Tuesday (May 8) asked the US to let them examine its beef production line, after a case of mad cow disease in California in late April.

In the request to Darci Vetter, deputy under-secretary of the Department of Agriculture's Farm and Foreign Agricultural Services (FFAS), the Taiwan officials said they wished to inspect beef slaughterhouses and processing plants across several US states from which beef is exported to Taiwan.

They also submitted a similar request to Michael Scuse, FFAS acting under-secretary, who agreed to pass it on to the relevant authorities but could not confirm whether it would be approved.

The Taiwanese delegation is scheduled to meet with John Clifford, chief veterinarian at US agriculture department, and visit the National Veterinary Services Laboratories on Thursday for a briefing on details of the latest mad-cow case.

In a random check late last month, a dead dairy cow at a rendering facility in California was found to have been infected with mad cow disease.

The case was reported amid controversy in Taiwan over a potential government move to conditionally allow US beef imports containing residues of ractopamine, a livestock leanness-enhancing drug that is currently banned in Taiwan.

Under a beef protocol signed with the US in October 2009, Taiwan has the option to "conduct on-site audits of a representative sample of the meat establishments that export beef or beef products" to Taiwan.

As part of the protocol, Taiwan agreed to lift most of the restrictions it had imposed on US beef products following the discovery of a case of mad cow disease in the US in 2003.

However, two months after the protocol was signed, Taiwan's Legislature amended the Food Sanitation Act, banning the import of certain types of US beef and beef products.

The move was described by the US as "a unilateral violation" of the protocol that it said had been signed "in good faith."