December 26, 2003

 

 

Taiwan Bans US Beef Imports and Feedstuffs Made of Lamb

 

The Taiwanese government announced a temporary ban on U.S. beef imports and feedstuffs made of lamb on Wednesday.

 

Officials of the Department of Health (DOH) and the Council of Agriculture (COA) said imports from the United States would be suspended until further notice.

 

The action was taken "to safeguard the domestic consumers and the cattle breeding sector," Chiang Yi-nan, chief of the Bureau of Animal and Plant Health Inspection and Quarantine, told a press conference hours after a briefing by the Taipei office of the American Institute in Taiwan.

 

Beef products already imported from the United States prior to the mad cow alert would not be removed from supermarket shelves, according to the officials.

 

Major marketing outlets, including the Carrefour and RT-Mart chain stores, said they have immediately stopped imports from the United States in accordance with the import ban.

 

But they will keep products already imported on the shelves. After selling the stock from U.S. suppliers, imports from other sources, mainly Australia and New Zealand, the island's two largest beef suppliers, will be increased to meet demand.

 

Officials at the Taiwan office of the U.S. Meat Export Federation assured local consumers of the safety of American beef products now on sale in the market here.

 

They said that U.S. cattle will have to go through stringent inspection by the Department of Agriculture and veterinarians before slaughtering. The mad cow viruses were not found in beef or beef steaks.

 

As Taiwan's third largest source of beef, U.S. meat exporters shipped about 14,000 tons or US$55 million worth of beef to the island last year.

 

DOH officials said that banned along with U.S. beef are cattle organs or other derivatives like processed beef products and bone marrow.

 

Products excluded from the import prohibition include milk and dairy products, fetuses, sperm, tallow and its derivatives without protein, cow hides, cow skins, and glues made from cow hides.

 

Although the COA banned imports of mutton-related feedstuffs from the United States, the decree will not affect U.S. mutton and lamb because imports from that nation are minimal, standing at about 10 tons or 3% of the island's total demand.

 

In addition to the new import ban, Taiwan has already suspended beef imports from five other nations, including Britain (since March 1996), Spain (December 2000), Germany (December 2000), Japan (September 2001), and Canada (May 2003) after mad cow disease was reported there.

 

Beef contaminated with mad cow disease consumed by humans can cause a variant of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, which has claimed more than 140 lives in Europe.

 

Taiwan has also prohibited imports of cosmetic products made from beef or mutton from countries where cases of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) ¡X better known as mad cow disease ¡X have been reported.