Referendum drive against U.S. beef imports moving into second phase

The committee ruled, by a vote of 16-0, that the initiative led by the Consumers' Foundation is in conformity with the law.

The proposed referendum will ask voters to veto the government's decision in November to open Taiwan's market to U.S. bone-in beef, ground beef and bovine offal and spines and demand that the government renegotiate a beef trade protocol with the United States, which opened Taiwan's market to the beef products.

In the next step, the Central Election Commission is expected to have household registration authorities check to make sure that the more than 129,000 people who signed the petition were in fact eligible voters and that signatures were not duplicated.

Passage of the procedure is essential for the initiative to enter its second phase, in which the initiators are required to obtain within six months the endorsement of 5 percent, or 860,000, of the 17.32 million eligible voters in the last presidential election.

However, as the Legislative Yuan already passed an amendment to the Act Governing Food Sanitation reinstating a partial ban against U.S. beef imports earlier this week, the necessity of the referendum has been called into question.

Lu Hsueh-chang, a whip of the ruling Kuomintang's (KMT's) legislative caucus, called on the referendum initiators to reconsider their campaign, arguing that there should not be "dual consideration of the same case."

Disagreeing with Lu, Ker Chien-ming, head of the opposition Democratic Progressive Party's policy committee, said the progress achieved by the referendum drive is "inspiring."

Taipei and Washington signed a protocol on Oct. 22 under which Taiwan agreed to lift its ban on U.S. bone-in beef and certain other beef products, including ground beef and beef offal, sparking a huge public outcry.

The ban was imposed in 2003 due to fears of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), or mad cow disease, a fatal, brain degenerating disease in cattle.

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