Worried about melamine contamination and dissatisfied with the Department of Health, a group of social activist bloggers calling themselves “Happy Mobs” are pushing for more corporate and government transparency.
“It’s been weeks since the melamine scare first broke and the government has changed the tolerable limit for melamine quite a few times. But they never explained to us why the changes were made, why we decided to follow the EU standard or the Hong Kong standards and how everything was decided,” Cheng Kuo-wei (鄭國威), initiator of the campaign, told the Taipei Times in a telephone interview.
“We want safe food and we want to know how the government makes decisions,” he said.
PHOTO: WU HSING-HUA, TAIPEI TIMES
“Although there’s a Government Information Disclosure Act [政府資訊公開法], it’s poorly executed,” he said. “I think the melamine scare is a good opportunity to push for more transparency.”
In a statement released by Happy Mobs, it asked the government to release “complete and clear records of all expert meetings — where the numbers came from and why some numbers were chosen but not others.”
“We would like to urge the government to come up with a set of standard food testing procedures, not an ambiguous ‘non-detectable’ standard,” it said. “We would also like to ask the government to allow concerned civic groups to participate in meetings and the policy-making process.”
Meanwhile, Tseng Chao-ming (曾昭明), founder of Corporate Social Responsibility Taiwan, called on food companies to fulfill their responsibilities by making public detailed information about their products, including where all the raw materials come from.
However, unlike more conventional civic groups, members of Happy Mobs do not meet face-to-face to discuss issues — many of them do not even know who their peers are.
Instead, they use a forum-like online platform to plan actions or compose common statements.
Each member posts the statements on their own blogs or forwards them to friends via e-mail.
So far, 657 blogs are participating in the campaign against melamine, which is just the latest issue Happy Mobs has taken on.
“We are a group of bloggers who are concerned about public issues. We’ve actually initiated other campaigns for the preservation of Losheng Sanatorium and environmental issues, and advocated support for the Green Party Taiwan [in the legislative elections],” said Daphne Hu (胡慕情), one of the bloggers.
“The advantage of an online campaign is that it is not limited by place or time and is a good way for those who may not have other channels to express their thoughts,” Hu said.
“I don’t expect the government to respond to us right now, but we want to accumulate enough sway to show the government what the public is thinking,” she said. “And if the government doesn’t want to listen to us, we may just have to solve that with a change of government.”
Happy Mobs discussions are open to the public and accessible by joining groups.google.com.tw/group/happymobs.
ANOTHER EMERGES: The CWA yesterday said this year’s fourth storm of the typhoon season had formed in the South China Sea, but was not expected to affect Taiwan Tropical Storm Gaemi has intensified slightly as it heads toward Taiwan, where it is expected to affect the country in the coming days, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. As of 8am yesterday, the 120km-radius storm was 800km southeast of Oluanpi (鵝鑾鼻), Taiwan’s southernmost tip, moving at 9kph northwest, the agency said. A sea warning for Gaemi could be issued tonight at the earliest, it said, adding that the storm is projected to be closest to Taiwan on Wednesday or Thursday. Gaemi’s potential effect on Taiwan remains unclear, as that would depend on its direction, radius and intensity, forecasters said. Former Weather Forecast
As COVID-19 cases in Japan have been increasing for 10 consecutive weeks, people should get vaccinated before visiting the nation, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said. The centers reported 773 hospitalizations and 124 deaths related to COVID-19 in Taiwan last week. CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Director Guo Hung-wei (郭宏偉) on Tuesday said the number of weekly COVID-19 cases reported in Japan has been increasing since mid-May and surpassed 55,000 cases from July 8 to July 14. The average number of COVID-19 patients at Japan’s healthcare facilities that week was also 1.39 times that of the week before and KP.3 is the dominant
The Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) working group for Taiwan-related policies is likely to be upgraded to a committee-level body, a report commissioned by the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said. As Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is increasingly likely to upgrade the CCP’s Central Leading Group for Taiwan Affairs, Taiwanese authorities should prepare by researching Xi and the CCP, the report said. At the third plenary session of the 20th Central Committee of the CCP, which ended on Thursday last week, the party set a target of 2029 for the completion of some tasks, meaning that Xi is likely preparing to
US-CHINA TRADE DISPUTE: Despite Beijing’s offer of preferential treatment, the lure of China has dimmed as Taiwanese and international investors move out Japan and the US have become the favored destinations for Taiwanese graduates as China’s attraction has waned over the years, the Ministry of Labor said. According to the ministry’s latest income and employment advisory published this month, 3,215 Taiwanese university graduates from the class of 2020 went to Japan, surpassing for the first time the 2,881 graduates who went to China. A total of 2,300 graduates from the class of 2021 went to the US, compared with the 2,262 who went to China, the document showed. The trend continued for the class of 2023, of whom 1,460 went to Japan, 1,334 went to