Taiwan Tati Cultural and Educational Foundation

More than 60 percent of the public does not accept easing the ban on imports of US meat products containing the livestock feed additive ractopamine as a prerequisite to resuming trade negotiations between Taiwan and the US, a public opinion survey found.

According to the poll results released by Taiwan Indicators Research Survey (TIRS) yesterday, 63.4 percent of respondents disagreed with the government’s claim that easing the ban on US beef imports was necessary for the resumption of Trade and Investment Framework Agreement (TIFA) negotiations with the US.

Recently, heavy rainfall caused the highway between Suao and Hualien to collapse again, cutting off traffic and immediately impacting the transportation of agricultural products out of Hualien.

In order to ensure that farmers did not see their precious crops go to waste, local students and civic groups started an initiative in which train passengers helped transport vegetables by rail in the hope of alleviating some of the farmers’ distribution problems. This initiative garnered support from the public, but was also met with some resistance from farmers who believed it could cause wholesalers to stop buying their produce, which would result in the collapse of local vegetable prices.