Beef, Avian Flu: Vegetarianism, here I come

One wonders just what kind of pharmacopoeia went into creating this cornucopia of agricultural news this week. It's normal to add that you'd like a dose of whatever they are smoking, but I think I'll take a pass on that, thanks. It's obviously some kind of depressant....

I hardly know what to write, because this topic is like the poster child for the old saw that the more trivial the issue, the more bitter the fighting. Background first.....

The background is that the two governments signed a protocol in October 2009 lifting most of the remaining restrictions on U.S. beef products that Taiwan had put in place following the discovery of a case of mad cow disease in 2003. Just two months later, however, the Taiwan legislature – in which Ma’s Kuomintang controlled some three-quarters of the seats – enacted a law that reversed some of those very provisions. Despite resentment at what it regarded as Taiwan’s reneging on the protocol, the U.S. government by early 2011 was willing to start preparations to resume TIFA talks. Then another obstacle arose when Taiwan rejected some shipments of beef found to contain traces of the leanness-enhancing feed additive ractopamine. Though ractopamine, widely used by American ranchers, had long been a banned substance in Taiwan, inspectors had not previously tested for its presence. Random inspections, and the rejection of many shipments, have continued over the past year, and the uncertainty has caused some big buyers such as Costco to switch to other sources of supply.

As the TT noted in its review of a Wikileaks cable:

Taiwan did not allow US bone-in beef — a ban which had been in place since 2003 when the country outlawed all US beef imports shortly after the first case of mad cow disease was discovered — until a Ma administration protocol with the US in October 2009.

That protocol did not resolve the dispute after the legislature amended the Act Governing Food Sanitation (食品衛生管理法) to ban imports of beef offal and ground beef and the government began testing US beef for ractopamine in January, both hindering the resumption of bilateral talks under the Trade and Investment Framework Agreement, which had been suspended since 2007 because of the controversy.

Lessee... the beef issue is really two issues. First, it was Mad Cow disease. In 2003 the Chen Administration banned US beef imports over the discovery of a case of Mad Cow in the US. The restrictions were not lifted until 2009, and the legislature then reinstated them. Then in 2011 Taiwan began testing beef imports for ractopamine and the rest was misery....

It was actually only in 2006 the government banned ractopamine:

Following the decision, Taiwan, which prohibits the use of ractopamine, said that its ban, which was introduced in 2006, would remain in place.

“We have no plan to change our zero-tolerance policy against the use of ractopamine in meat products,” Minister Without Portfolio Yiin Chii-ming (尹啟銘) said by telephone.

President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) in March charged Yiin with the task of reopening negotiations with the US under the Trade and Investment Framework Agreement (TIFA) platform after the US unexpectedly put a hold on talks originally scheduled to resume in late January over the ractopamine issue.

The TIFA talks, which started in 1994, have been suspended since 2007, in response to Taiwan banning imports of US beef over fears of mad cow disease.

Beef might be a small thing in the overall US-Taiwan trade picture but for US producers Taiwan was an important market:

Taiwan purchased $128 million in beef products from the United States in 2008. In 2002 -- the last full year that the banned beef items were sold on the island -- they constituted about 13 percent of total U.S. beef imports.

The ractopamine ban was introduced in 2006 but no testing was done until years later. This means -- let's complete this circle -- that Taiwanese must have been eating ractopamine in US pork, for which it was introduced under the name Paylean in 2000, for years. Indeed...

After a 37 percent drop in 2007, U.S. pork (including variety meat) exports to Taiwan bounced back in 2008 with a 98 percent volume increase to 31,701 metric tons and a 115 percent rise in value to $52.9 million. The upward trend continued in 2009.

It did not reach US cattle until 2003, apparently after the Chen Administration ban went into effect (article on development of ractopamine). But US beef was entering the country in various guises between 2006 and 2011...

Ok, background done, now once again we should note that...

....the air is polluted, the veggies are coated with chemicals, the rivers are stinking open sewers, the pork is a testing ground for antibiotics, the roadways operate in Death Race 2000 mode, and the Taiwanese are as prone to eat junk food as any other people. But let the US want to bring in beef with traces of ractopamine....

The government this week pushed for a conditional lifting of the ban, triggering protests:

Sixteen civic groups took to the streets of Taipei yesterday to demand the resignation of Premier Sean Chen over the Cabinet’s decision to push for a conditional lifting of a ban on imports of US beef containing a controversial feed additive.

This led to the usual tussle between the KMT and the DPP. The latter is using the beef issue to bash the KMT. Ractopamine was banned under the DPP but no steps were taken to actually test for it (laws are made to be seen, not heard, in Taiwan). The danger for the pan-Greens should be obvious -- from the US perspective the KMT government has adopted the "reasonable" position and the DPP the "intransigent" position. A DPP legislator accused the KMT of making a political deal with the US on the issue in exchange for US support in the elections (but given the DPP position on this how could the US have dealt with that party? D'oh.) However, supporters of lifting the ban argue that it hurts Taiwan in its attempt to join the US-led TPP "free trade" initiative as well as in the talks on the Taiwan-US trade framework, TIFA, which, like fusion energy and a Cleveland Browns Super Bowl victory, is always just a few years away. Recall that the TIFA talks were suspended in 2007 and the US did blame the beef issue when it suspended them.

One of the keys to understanding the passionate silliness of the Taiwanese is identified in this TT article from the other day:

Throwing pieces of raw beef on signs with illustrations of President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) dressed as Uncle Sam, with the words: “I want you to eat US beef” written on them, the protesters said that the administration was neglecting the public’s health, while humiliating the nation and forfeiting its sovereignty.

Because Taiwan's sovereignty is always contested and always perceived as threatened, issues like this one that thrust themselves into that netherworld where the ROC virtual state meets the reality of global non-recognition are blown totally out of proportion. When it comes to sovereignty, the Taiwanese are like a cripple who pushes his wheelchair into a bar and then picks a fight with the biggest fellow present. There is also the underlying xenophobia, so non-obvious in everyday discourse and behavior, but always there lying under the surface, waiting to arise. The intersection of food, medicine, and The Other, who is tainted by his foreignness and cannot become One of Us is also explosive -- in this case, The Other is literally tainted with an uncertain drug. It's a shame that ractopamine-laden beef importers aren't visibly cruising nightclubs picking up Taiwanese girls, then every Taiwanese anti-foreigner button would be pressed. And this blogpost would be a lot more amusing too.

But enough of beef. The government will bull its way to getting acceptance of a conditional lifting of the ban, enough to satisfy appearances for the US. US beef will flow onto the island, consumers will eat it and this controversy will vanish like campaign promises on the day after the election.

The other interesting ag-related issue is the appearance of another round of avian flu on the island. There was an outbreak of avian flu in December in Changhua, which immediately led to claims that the outbreak had been covered up because of the upcoming election. I heard rumors of this in December but had no way to verify it. However, a group of activists claimed that the government had been covering up evidence of highly pathogenic avian flu for two years....

EAST disclosed two documents from 2010, dated March 1 and March 8, that the council’s Animal Health Research Institute sent to the Bureau of Animal and Plant Health Inspection and Quarantine. The documents showed that two technical group meetings held on Feb. 25 and March 5 that year had already received H5N2 Intravenous Pathogenicity Index [IVPI] lab results, which showed readings above 1.2 and 2.41, indicators that the strains were highly pathogenic.

Readings greater than 1.2 in an IVPI test on a six-week-old chicken indicate a highly pathogenic strain.

However, the council’s four reports to the OIE that year all said that the cases were “of a low pathogenic level,” EAST executive director Wu Hung (朱增宏) said, adding that the council should explain why it added “clinical high death rate” as a criteria for determining a virus strain’s severity.

According to the information supplied by the DPP, the Council on Agriculture had filed the report on the outbreak in Changhua on Jan 10, four days prior to the Jan 14 election. Prosecutors are looking into the issue even as we speak, and the director-general of the bureau of plant and animal health inspection and quarantine resigned on the 4th. Media reports (Focus Taiwan) say that a documentary filmmaker has been shooting film of bird flu on farms in central and southern Taiwan since 2006.

Vegetarianism sure is looking good.....
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Daily Links:

• Andrew picks up my post on this week's trip to Green Island and adds a few notes. He also posts on the magnificent Wuling ride.
• China's cybercapabilities put US forces at risk. 
• US, Philippines to hold annual military exercises in waters China wants to annex. But watch out, Chen Shui-bian, you're provoking Beijing.....
• China says as soon as investment agreement is reached, Chinese capital can begin swallowing Taiwanese firms and poaching their technology investing in Taiwan.
• Taiwan's exports fall 4.5% year on year, but this was actually the second highest total ever since last year was so enormous. However, the steepest decline was in information tech.....
• A new approach to fusion energy?

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