Ractopamine ban lifted: Council of Agriculture: Not allowed to use in pork

The amendment to the Food Sanitation Management Act has passed to conditionally allow meat products to contain ractopamine. Although "separation of cattle and pigs" has not been included in the article, Chen Baoji, chairman of the Council of Agriculture, pointed out that ractopamine will only be allowed as a feed additive for cattle. For other animals, including pigs, ractopamine is still a banned drug. Therefore, ractopamine will not be detected in pork, whether domestically produced or imported. (Video/Photographer Huang Zhiwen)

Chen Baoji, chairman of the Council of Agriculture, pointed out that the 16-word motto of "safety allowed, separation of cattle and pigs, mandatory labeling, and exclusion of offal" is included in the Food Sanitation Management Act, but explicitly including "separation of cattle and pigs" in the law would violate WTO regulations. (Photography by Huang Zhiwen)

Chen Baoji said that the implementation will definitely be towards the realization of "separation of cattle and pigs". The Council of Agriculture will only "conditionally lift the ban" on the addition of ractopamine to feed for beef. Currently, only the United States, Canada, Mexico, and Indonesia use ractopamine in cattle feed. The beef imported from these four countries to Taiwan cannot exceed 10ppb in accordance with Taiwan's regulations on the safe limit of ractopamine in beef.

He stressed that pork is not included in the list of meats that can be allowed to contain clenbuterol, and that no residue standards will be set for pork in the future, so there must not be any clenbuterol residues in pork; in addition, except for ractopamine, other types of clenbuterol are still listed as banned drugs.

"The government takes the concerns of pig farmers to heart and will take action to protect them!" Chen Baoji said that although professional evaluation has shown no scientific evidence that meat produced from feed containing ractopamine is harmful to the human body, the government still needs to take into account the development of the domestic industry. Therefore, in order to take into account the development of the livestock industry, including pig farmers, foreign pork containing ractopamine will not be allowed to be imported into Taiwan.

In addition to separating cattle and pigs, Chen Baoji pointed out that the government will also follow the approach of "differentiation between domestic and foreign" and allow ractopamine residues in meat only for imported beef. Domestic cattle will not be allowed to use ractopamine as cattle feed. In addition, as far as he knows, domestic beef producers all believe that there is no need to use ractopamine.