After learning from reports that the government is preparing to to ease restrictions on U.S. beef imports, activists from a number of civic groups contended that the government should not sacrifice the public's health for the sake of political and economic benefits.

The government currently only allows the import of boneless beef from cattle under 30 months of age but may lift or ease the two constraints under intense lobbying from the U.S. government.

Likening opening U.S. beef exports to arms procurement, Green Party Taiwan spokesman Pan Han-shen said that both involve politics and that the government should not put local people's health at risk for short-term gain, including the possibility of negotiating and signing a Taiwan-U.S. free trade agreement.

Hu Ya-mei, president of the Homemakers' Union and Foundation, said that prion proteins, the agents that cause bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) , or mad cow disease, are not easily killed by cooking or ultraviolet rays and can survive in any part of any infected cow, posing a hazard to human health.

The best way to stay safe, Hu stressed, is to fully ban U.S. beef imports.

The groups demanded that the DOH hold hearings before making a decision on whether to relax or tighten restrictions on U.S. beef imports and urged that all beef and related products should be labeled with the place of production and a risk warning.

Taiwan banned U.S. beef in 2003 when a case of mad cow disease was diagnosed in Seattle. The ban was lifted in 2005 to allow imports of U.S. de-boned beef from cattle aged under 30 months, but the government reimposed the ban two months later when a second BSE case was discovered in the U.S.

In 2006, the DOH agreed to allow beef imports once again, but limited imports to boneless beef from cattle younger than 30 months of age, produced by certified slaughterhouses.

Over the past three years, U.S. beef imports have increased annually, and the U.S. now supplies around 32 percent of Taiwan's beef, with the rest coming mainly from New Zealand and Australia.