KMT legislators "disappeared", amendment to the esophageal law stalled

American beef clenbuterol is practicing "cow steps"! Originally, the Legislative Yuan's Health and Environment Committee was going to vote on the "Draft Amendment to Certain Articles of the Food Sanitation Management Act" item by item today, the 26th, which is related to whether to lift the ban on the lean meat stimulant ractopamine. However, KMT convener Tsai Chin-lung announced that he would take a break on the grounds that green camp legislators were boycotting the agenda. He never returned after he left. In addition, all blue camp legislators were absent afterwards. The remaining green camp legislators took turns holding up signs saying "Search for Tsai Chin-lung". His "disappearance" made the meeting idle for the entire day.

Legislators from the Democratic Progressive Party held up signs that read "Help find Tsai Chin-lung," mocking him for disappearing to avoid voting on the esophageal law and leaving the meeting idle for the entire day. (Photography by Zhang Yawen)

This is not the first time such a scene has happened. On March 29 this year, the Health and Environmental Protection Committee reviewed the Esophageal Act for the first time. Cai Jinlong, who was also the convener of the committee that day, announced a break when faced with the green camp legislators' insistence that "there is no Executive Yuan version and we refuse to review it." Faced with the green camp legislators occupying the podium, he actually held a wireless microphone in the afternoon and announced unilaterally that "the entire case will be retained for consultation between the government and the opposition, and the meeting will now be adjourned." This was described as a surprise attack by the green camp legislators, which led to physical conflict.

Today, the Executive Yuan version finally entered the committee. In the morning, the ruling and opposition parties reached a consensus in the consultation to vote on each clause one by one, giving priority to the clauses concerning whether to lift the ban on ractopamine. Unexpectedly, some KMT committee members, who originally had an advantage in the number of votes, disagreed with the conditional opening of the Executive Yuan version and chose to be absent. In addition, the outbreak of mad cow disease in the US government has increased public aversion to American beef containing ractopamine, which has also made some KMT committee members hesitate whether to vote in favor.

Therefore, after the bill entered the line-by-line review at 10:30 this morning, there was an argument between blue and green legislators over the details of the review process. Convener Tsai Chin-lung immediately announced a break and conducted government-opposition consultations, but he left the scene at 11 o'clock and has not appeared since. Green legislators were worried that Tsai Chin-lung would make another surprise attack, so they sat in the committee waiting for people, and held up and shouted slogans and slogans such as "Help find Tsai Chin-lung", pointing out that Tsai Chin-lung resorted to the trick of "disappearing" because he was afraid of losing the vote.

However, Tsai Jin-lung later held a press conference in the KMT caucus meeting room to refute the allegations, accusing the DPP of using every possible means to boycott the proceedings and even making demands unrelated to the legislative amendments, clarifying that they did not reject the vote.