News Brief: Food wasted in Taiwan

Statistics compiled by the Environmental Protection Administration show that Taiwanese in 2010 wasted 2.75 million tonnes of food, the equivalent of 20 years of -consumption by 260,000 low-income households, DPP legislator Lin Chia-lung was quoted in an article about establishing a food bank in today's Taipei Times (full article here).

Another interesting fact (assuming true) from the article is that:
US Department of Agriculture statistics show that more than 46 million Americans, or about 15 percent of the US population, lived on assistance provided by food banks last year, Lin said.

If President Ma has his way

,,, expect to see a lot more signs like this ("not US beef")
because Ma called on the country to allow imports of tainted US meat and then for customers to boycott it on a person by person basis

News Brief: Taiwan prepares to allow US beef imports

Food politics made the front-page main article of the Taipei Times today (full article here) as the Council of Agriculture is preparing to set tolerance levels for ractopamine residues in meat, thereby giving a green light to the import of US beef.

Although successive governments have promised to do this over the last half-decade, the opposition Democratic Progressive Party accused the KMT-led administration of poor timing for implementing changes immediately after winning the election.

Currently Taiwan has a zero tolerance for the growth-promoting chemical.

News Brief: Will Taiwan trade dangerous beef for visa-free entry to the US?

The Ministry of Economic Affairs dismissed speculation that Taiwan’s admission into the US’ visa-waiver program would be linked to concessions on easing restrictions on imports of US beef, the Taipei Times reports today (full article here).

“They are two different issues, and there is no question of one being traded for the other,” a ranking economics official said, asking people not to link the two issues.

This was in response to media reports saying the US was hinting that without progress on the beef issue--in which Taiwan' bans beef containing the lean meat-enhancing drug ractopamine--Taiwan would not be given visa-waiver status.

Taiwan bans the use of the drug, although the US and some other countries such as Australia, Canada and New Zealand accept certain amounts of residue of the drug in beef.

The dispute over beef has caused a suspension of trade talks between Taiwan and the US under the Trade and Investment Framework Agreement (TIFA).

Taiwan and the US have not held any TIFA talks since 2007, mainly because of controversy over beef imports from the US.