Beef trade dispute derails plans for 3 pacts with U.S.: official

TAIPEI, Taiwan -- A civic campaign seeking a national referendum on whether U.S. beef imports should be allowed passed a review by the Cabinet's Referendum Screening Committee Thursday, pushing the initiative one step further toward success.
The committee ruled, by a vote of 16-0, that the initiative led by the Consumers' Foundation is in conformity with the law.
The proposed referendum will ask voters to veto the government's decision in November to open Taiwan's market to U.S. bone-in beef, ground beef and bovine offal and spines and demand that the government renegotiate a beef trade protocol with the United States, which opened Taiwan's market to the beef products.
In the next step, the Central Election Commission is expected to have household registration authorities check to make sure that the more than 129,000 people who signed the petition were in fact eligible voters and that signatures were not duplicated.
Passage of the procedure is essential for the initiative to enter its second phase, in which the initiators are required to obtain within six months the endorsement of 5 percent, or 860,000, of the 17.32 million eligible voters in the last presidential election.
However, as the Legislative Yuan already passed an amendment to the Act Governing Food Sanitation reinstating a partial ban against U.S. beef imports earlier this week, the necessity of the referendum has been called into question.
Lu Hsueh-chang, a whip of the ruling Kuomintang's (KMT's) legislative caucus, called on the referendum initiators to reconsider their campaign, arguing that there should not be "dual consideration of the same case."
Disagreeing with Lu, Ker Chien-ming, head of the opposition Democratic Progressive Party's policy committee, said the progress achieved by the referendum drive is "inspiring."
Taipei and Washington signed a protocol on Oct. 22 under which Taiwan agreed to lift its ban on U.S. bone-in beef and certain other beef products, including ground beef and beef offal, sparking a huge public outcry.
The ban was imposed in 2003 due to fears of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), or mad cow disease, a fatal, brain degenerating disease in cattle.
The rare disease is known as new variant Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease in humans. Scientists believe that it may be transmitted to human beings who eat the brain or spinal cord of infected carcasses.

Civic groups in Taiwan led by the Consumers' Foundation and politicians contend that allowing the entry of products that are considered at high risk of spreading the disease could endanger the health of local consumers.
Under public pressure, the KMT-controlled Legislative Yuan amended the Act Governing Food Sanitation on Jan. 5 to target beef products from countries with documented BSE cases over the past decade.
It will effectively bar U.S. ground beef, beef offal and other beef parts such as the skull, eyes and intestines from access to Taiwan's market, though setting no restrictions on bone-in beef.
In the wake of the amendment, Premier Wu Den-yih said the government will seek to reopen talks with Washington on issues related to beef imports now that a small part of the Taiwan-U.S. beef trade protocol has become inapplicable.
Pledging to go ahead with the referendum drive, Consumers' Foundation Chairman Hsieh Tien-jen said Thursday that using a referendum to pressure the United States to reopen beef trade talks with Taiwan remains the best way to deal with the problem.
According to Hsieh, the action taken by the legislature could draw retaliation from the United States and might provoke new controversy because it contravenes the Taiwan-U.S. protocol.
He said the fact that bone-in beef is less dangerous than ground beef and beef offal in terms of BSE contamination does not mean no risk is involved. Consumers should be given the chance to decide by themselves whether the product can be imported into the country, he added.
Also Thursday, Executive Yuan spokesman Su Jun-pin said the Cabinet respects the decision by the Referendum Screening Committee.
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