They took the move yesterday in warm response to a call from Taipei Mayor Hau Lung-bin to exercise self-management measures to safeguard customers' safety and put their clients at ease despite the central government's consent of relaxing import restrictions on American beef products beginning in mid-November.

Just a day after the Taipei City's Office of Commerce initiated a plan to encourage the city's 15,000 restaurants, supermarket chains, hotels and department stores to form an alliance whose members will boycott the sale or use of internal organs and other parts of U.S. beef, more than 200 stores had already signed up, said Liu Chia-chun, director of the office.

Liu said his office will accept applications between Nov. 11 and Dec. 31 by these stores for an alliance logo they can display in their stores to indicate that they do not supply or use U.S. beef offal, ground beef or spinal cords.

If stores carrying the alliance badge are found to be selling or using these products, they will be stripped of their certificates and fined in accordance with the Consumers Protection Law, he said.

Stores and restaurants that do not join the alliance will be checked randomly and be required to indicate on their packaging or menus the country of origin of their beef, he continued.

To check the import sources, the city government will apply the same monitor measures when some milk powders and cream, coffee powder originating from China were found last year to have been contaminated with melamine, a highly toxic chemical used in plastics.

In addition, trade groups like the Importers and Exporters Association of Taipei, the Taipei County Importers and Exporters Chamber of Commerce, the Kaohsiung Importers and Exporters Chamber of Commerce, the Taiwan Provincial Importers and Exporters Chamber of Commerce, management association at major markets in Taipei and Kaohsiung also voiced support for the campaign launched by Mayor Hau.

Leading beef importers like Mayfull Foods Corp., Shuh Sen Co., Game Meat Industrial Co., retailing chains like Wellcome, and steak house chains including Noble Family said they will continue to import and use U.S. beef but will not touch the internal organs which are unlikely to win patronage of local customers anyway.

Mayor Hau's initiative was interpreted by some as a preemptive tactic to help defuse the mounting attack on the government from the opposition Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) on the beef dispute ahead of the local elections in December.

Hau stressed his opposition to imports of U.S. beef offal and ground beef was not politically motivated.

Hau said the city government's decision to boycott the protocol inked recently by the Department of Health (DOH) with the U.S. on opening Taiwan's doors wider to U.S. beef imports was made purely over health concerns.

The mayor said he fully understands the dilemma that the central government was facing when it signed the protocol, but he agreed with a senior government official who said recently that "opening the market does not mean that the government will push sales."

Hau said he supports the boycott drive simply because he is the mayor of Taipei and responsible for overseeing the health of city residents and based on professional knowledge that he learned as a student and professor of food science and nutrition.

Mayor Jason Hu of Taichung City decided to support the campaign boycotting internal organs from U.S. cattle.

The mayor and his staff will soon announce a series of measures and procedures to protect consumers living and working in the major metropolis in central Taiwan.

Hu, a former foreign ministers, said the decision of the central government over the beef trade should be respected.

Nevertheless, the local-level administrators should not neglect their duty of safeguarding the local residents' welfare.

Officials at the Presidential Office and the Cabinet said they respect the policies taken by the administrators.

The U.S. negotiators have been sticking to a tactic of placing the beef trade as a precondition for any bilateral trade talks, giving the government led by President Ma Ying-jeou little choice, according to some sources.

Ma is expected to personally give clarification on the decision-making process and the factors behind accepting the U.S. demand.

But the initiative of boycotting the beef viscera deemed as unsafe by local governments and consumers groups will help get the central government off the hook by leaving the final choice to the people.

Reflecting concerns of parents, Wang Chun-chuan, director-general of the Department of Physical Education under the Ministry of Education, said the ministry will not encourage schools around the country to use U.S. beef products when preparing meals for students until their safety is certified by the health authorities.

Kaohsiung Magistrate Yang Chiu-hsing said schools in the southern county will be forbidden from preparing meals with U.S. ground beef or offal.

Yang also demanded that restaurants and supermarkets disclose the origin of their beef products to allow consumers to make their own choices.