A report released on Wednesday in the US highlighted several problems concerning the safe use of ractopamine, a controversial feed additive. US trade officials have been pressing countries — including Taiwan — to lift their import bans on meat produced with the drug.
The report, conducted by Helena Bottemiller, was produced by the Food and Environment Reporting Network, an independent and non-profit news organization providing investigative reporting on food, agriculture and environmental health.
In the article, Bottemiller first questioned the safety studies used by US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to classify ractopamine as safe 13 years ago and to set a level of acceptable residues in meat.
“The safety study conducted by the drug maker Elanco lies at the heart of the current trade dispute,” Bottemiller said.
Elanco mainly tested animals — mice, rats, monkeys and dogs — to judge how much ractopamine could be safely consumed, while only one human study was used in the safety assessment. Among the six healthy young men who participated, one was removed because his heart began beating rapidly and abnormally, Bottemiller writes.
Elanco has reported that “no adverse effects were observed for any treatments,” but, within a few years of its approval, it received hundreds of reports of sickened pigs, according to records obtained by Bottemiller from the FDA’s Center for Veterinary Medicine.
“Since it was introduced, ractopamine had sickened or killed more than 218,000 pigs as of March 2011, more than any other animal drug on the market, a review of FDA veterinary records shows,” the report says.
The FDA ruled that ractopamine was safe and approved it for pigs in 1999, for cattle in 2003 and turkeys in 2008, Bottemiller said.
Bottemiller said there was a problem of overuse of the additive.
She quoted Temple Grandin, a professor at Colorado State University and animal welfare expert, as saying: “I’ve personally seen people overuse the drug in hogs and cattle.”
“I was in a plant once where they used too much ractopamine and the pigs were so weak they couldn’t walk. They had five or six people just dedicated to handling the lame pigs,” Grandin was quoted as saying in the report.
Another issue mentioned in the report was that “in the US, residue tests for ractopamine are limited.”
“In 2010, for example, the US did no tests on 10 billion kilograms of pork; 712 samples were taken from 12 billion kilograms of beef. Those results have not yet been released,” Bottemiller writes.
Canada and 24 other countries also approved the drug, but Taiwan, the EU, China and many others countries have banned its use, limiting US meat exports to key markets.
Bottemiller said in the report that some US food companies also avoid meat produced with the feed additive, including Chipotle restaurants, meat producer Niman Ranch and Whole Foods Markets.
The issue has also strained the US-Taiwan trade relationship.
Taiwan began testing US beef for ractopamine in January last year, prolonging a suspension in talks under the Trade and Investment Framework Agreement (TIFA) that had been in place since 2007, when Taiwan banned US beef imports because of mad cow disease concerns.
The latest US effort to get Taiwan to revise its zero tolerance of ractopamine use was made by US Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs Kurt Campbell on Jan. 20 when he said that “now that the [Jan. 14 presidential and legislative] election is over, we are hoping that Taiwan will do something on the beef issue.”
The Taiwanese government has said it would not revise its zero--tolerance policy unless the Codex Alimentarius Commission (Codex), which sets global food-safety standards, established standards for trace levels of ractopamine.
‘DENIAL DEFENSE’: The US would increase its military presence with uncrewed ships, and submarines, while boosting defense in the Indo-Pacific, a Pete Hegseth memo said The US is reorienting its military strategy to focus primarily on deterring a potential Chinese invasion of Taiwan, a memo signed by US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth showed. The memo also called on Taiwan to increase its defense spending. The document, known as the “Interim National Defense Strategic Guidance,” was distributed this month and detailed the national defense plans of US President Donald Trump’s administration, an article in the Washington Post said on Saturday. It outlines how the US can prepare for a potential war with China and defend itself from threats in the “near abroad,” including Greenland and the Panama
A wild live dugong was found in Taiwan for the first time in 88 years, after it was accidentally caught by a fisher’s net on Tuesday in Yilan County’s Fenniaolin (粉鳥林). This is the first sighting of the species in Taiwan since 1937, having already been considered “extinct” in the country and considered as “vulnerable” by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. A fisher surnamed Chen (陳) went to Fenniaolin to collect the fish in his netting, but instead caught a 3m long, 500kg dugong. The fisher released the animal back into the wild, not realizing it was an endangered species at
The High Prosecutors’ Office yesterday withdrew an appeal against the acquittal of a former bank manager 22 years after his death, marking Taiwan’s first instance of prosecutors rendering posthumous justice to a wrongfully convicted defendant. Chu Ching-en (諸慶恩) — formerly a manager at the Taipei branch of BNP Paribas — was in 1999 accused by Weng Mao-chung (翁茂鍾), then-president of Chia Her Industrial Co, of forging a request for a fixed deposit of US$10 million by I-Hwa Industrial Co, a subsidiary of Chia Her, which was used as collateral. Chu was ruled not guilty in the first trial, but was found guilty
DEADLOCK: As the commission is unable to forum a quorum to review license renewal applications, the channel operators are not at fault and can air past their license date The National Communications Commission (NCC) yesterday said that the Public Television Service (PTS) and 36 other television and radio broadcasters could continue airing, despite the commission’s inability to meet a quorum to review their license renewal applications. The licenses of PTS and the other channels are set to expire between this month and June. The National Communications Commission Organization Act (國家通訊傳播委員會組織法) stipulates that the commission must meet the mandated quorum of four to hold a valid meeting. The seven-member commission currently has only three commissioners. “We have informed the channel operators of the progress we have made in reviewing their license renewal applications, and
RSS