DOH backtracks on tests and melamine standards
　

BLACK AND WHITE: The authorities will only test whether melamine is present or absent in a product, regardless of the hazardous substance’s concentration
　

By Flora Wang and Shelley Huang
STAFF REPORTERS
Saturday, Sep 27, 2008, Page 1
　

The Cabinet’s regulations on melamine took a sudden turn yesterday as Premier Liu Chao-shiuan (劉兆玄) announced that none of the dairy products and raw materials from China that had been pulled off shelves would be allowed to be sold until they were proven to be melamine-free.

“The Cabinet previously demanded that products containing dairy ingredients or vegetable-based protein from China must be pulled off shelves until they were cleared of containing the additive melamine,” he said. “This policy remains unchanged.”

Liu did not elaborate on whether his remarks meant zero tolerance of melamine in all products, saying only that “how to make sure that the products do not contain melamine additive is a scientific issue and should be determined by experts.”

Liu made the remarks to reporters when leaving the Legislative Yuan yesterday morning, adding that newly appointed Health Minister Yeh Chin-chuan (葉金川) would convene meetings later in the day to discuss the issue.

When approached by reporters for elaboration, Cabinet Spokeswoman Vanessa Shih (史亞平) said only that “the Department of Health’s [DOH] policy forbids the addition of any melamine to food. Our goal is to ensure that all products test negative for [melamine].”

Liu’s announcement came after a protest lodged by the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) caucus occupied the podium and paralyzed the plenary session in the legislature yesterday morning.

DPP legislators held up banners that read “The Cabinet lacks a conscience, is poisoning Taiwan and should immediately step down,” preventing the premier from reporting the government’s budget requests for next year as scheduled.

Legislators across party lines also slammed the Cabinet for the DOH’s easing of regulations on melamine.

The DOH surprised many on Wednesday night by loosening the food safety standard for melamine to 2.5 parts per million (ppm) from the zero ppm it had announced on Tuesday.

In other words, based on the DOH’s announced standard on Wednesday, products containing up to 2.5ppm of the toxic chemical could still enter the Taiwanese market.

DPP caucus whip William Lai (賴清德) said yesterday that the caucus wanted the Cabinet “pulled off the shelf.”

“[The relaxation of the regulation] influences not only the health of the 23 million people in Taiwan but also Taiwan’s trade and economy. Our caucus vows to fight until the death. We are ready for conflict if the Liu Cabinet does not reverse the regulation,” another DPP caucus whip Pan Meng-an (潘孟安) said.

Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislators Liao Cheng-ching (廖正井) and Wu Ching-shih (吳清池) urged the government to adjust the melamine standard back to zero ppm.

KMT caucus secretary-general Chang Sho-wen (張碩文) agreed with them, but said he did not support replacing the premier, adding that the Cabinet should focus on how to restore the public’s confidence in the government and food products.

Meanwhile, the KMT caucus encouraged the public to consume more domestic milk products and coffee from Yunlin County’s Gukeng Township (古坑) amid the melamine scare. KMT caucus deputy secretary-general Lo Shu-lei (羅淑蕾) said the melamine crisis also presented an opportunity for the public to consume more Taiwanese products.

Health minister Lin Fang-yue (林芳郁) stepped down on Thursday to take political responsibility for the DOH’s much-criticized slow reaction to and inconsistent management of the melamine scare.

Yeh, who the Cabinet announced late on Thursday night would be the official to replace Lin, took over the DOH yesterday afternoon as the new health minister in a hand-over ceremony.

“In the future, there will be no more numbers [ppm] mentioned in melamine tests, only positive or negative for presence of melamine,” he said.

“People only need to know whether it is safe to consume … As long as it has passed the test, it will be allowed on the market,” Yeh said, adding that the department will ensure all products on the shelves are fit for consumption.

To expedite testing, the department will soon certify 19 laboratories, including the Food Industry Research and Development Institute, for melamine testing, he said.

“In two weeks, we will meet experts in the US, Japan, Australia, New Zealand and the EU to collaborate on solutions to the melamine problem,” Yeh said, vowing “to find a fair way to test for melamine despite different instruments.”

Different testing instruments have different sensitivities in testing melamine.

Yeh yesterday also said that if the DPP had doubts, it could gather its own experts.

“Science does not involve politics,” he said. “We welcome DPP experts to discuss possible solutions together.”

During the ceremony yesterday, which was overseen by Minister Without Portfolio Chang Chin-fu (張進福), Lin said that no one has fallen sick in Taiwan because of having consumed melamine, except in China and other countries, and asked “so are we only scaring ourselves? Is it really necessary to make this into a SARS of food [safety]?”

But he reminded the department, “Don’t forget that we are a democratic country. If people complain to us about food safety, it is our responsibility to evaluate what went wrong.”

National Yang-Ming University Hospital reported yesterday that three Taiwanese toddlers and one woman had developed kidney stones after drinking tainted Chinese milk products.

All four victims had frequently visited China and the three children, all aged between two and three, drank Chinese milk formula, the hospital said.

“The hospital screened nine children who have been drinking milk suspected of containing melamine ... and three are found to have kidney stones,” it said in a statement, adding the mother of one of the children also has the condition.

Carbon dioxide emissions even higher as China becomes world’s No. 1 emitter

AFP, PARIS AND BLOOMBERG
Saturday, Sep 27, 2008, Page 1

China has leapfrogged the US to become the world’s biggest carbon emitter and India is heading for third place, scientists said yesterday in a report that warned global greenhouse-gas emission levels were at record highs.

The report, by a research consortium called the Global Carbon Project (GCP), confirms an estimate that China has become the biggest producer of carbon dioxide (CO2), the principal gas that causes global warming.

Until 2005, rich countries emitted most of the world’s man-made CO2. Today, developing countries now account for 53 percent of the total, the GCP said.

“The biggest increase in emissions has been taking place in developing countries, largely in China and India, while developed countries have been growing slowly,” it said. “The largest regional shift was that China passed the US in 2006 to become the largest CO2 emitter, and India will soon overtake Russia to become the third largest emitter.”

The GCP said CO2 emissions last year were the equivalent to almost 10 billion tonnes of carbon. Fossil fuels accounted for 8.5 billion tonnes and changes to land use, mainly through deforestation, accounted for the rest.

Atmospheric concentrations of CO2 surged 2.2 parts per million (ppm) last year to reach 383ppm. The rise was 1.8ppm in 2006.

At 383ppm, CO2 levels are 37 percent above the benchmark in the year 1750 when the start of the Industrial Revolution unleashed voracious use of coal, oil and gas.

“The present concentration is the highest in the last 650,000 years and probably during the last 20 million years,” the report said.

It warned: “All of these changes characterize a carbon cycle that is generating stronger climate forcing, and sooner than expected.”

The document, which was to be unveiled simultaneously at conferences in Paris and Washington yesterday, also made these points:

• Emissions have risen starkly since the Millennium. From 2000 to last year, the average annual hike has been 2.0ppm. This compares with 1.3ppm per year in the 1970s, 1.6ppm in the 1980s and 1.5ppm in the 1990s.

• Fossil-fuel emissions this decade are running at four times those of the 1990s.

• Tropical deforestation also amounted to 1.5 billion tonnes of carbon last year, with Latin America and Asia each accounting for 600 million tonnes and Africa 300 million.

• Natural “sinks” — the ocean, forests and other land — are “a huge subsidy” to the global economy, worth US$500 billion annually for soaking up more than half of the CO2 that would otherwise be released into the atmosphere.

But these “sinks” are in bad condition. Their efficiency has fallen by 5 percent over the past 50 years “and will continue to do so in the future.”

The GCP report, Carbon Budget 2007, is authored by eight scientists in a project sponsored by the International Geosphere-Biosphere Program, the International Human Dimensions Program on Global Environmental Research and the World Climate Research Program.

It is based on UN data, statistical models and climate research published in major peer-reviewed journals and on energy data collected by the oil giant BP.

“Our numbers provide a reality check,” said Corinne Le Quere, from the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) and the University of East Anglia in Eastern England. “The scale of efforts [to reduce emissions] is not enough.”

Last year, China emitted 1.8 billion tonnes of carbon from fossil fuels, compared with 1.59 billion by the US. Russia was third with 432 million tonnes, followed by India with 430 million.

Leaders from about 180 nations are locked in a two-year round of talks aimed at crafting a global pact to fight climate change by reducing carbon dioxide that is lofted into the skies.

Greenhouse gases threaten to accelerate warming to levels that the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said last year will increase floods and droughts, raise sea levels and extinguish thousands of species.

“It’s been all talk and until there’s action, emissions will continue to go up,” Martin Parry, who last year co-chaired one of the panel’s three working groups, said yesterday in a telephone interview from his home in eastern England.

“The window of opportunity we have in order to achieve an international agreement and act upon it is beginning to close. We have potentially serious damage in store,” he said.

Emissions need to peak by 2015 and drop by 50 percent by 2050 to limit warming to 2°C more than the level before the Industrial Revolution in the mid-18th century, the UN panel proposed.

Global talks aim to close a deal at a conference of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change in Copenhagen in December next year.

With emissions currently tracking the high end of scenarios examined by the UN, temperatures may rise as much as 6.3°C by 2100, said Le Quere, a member of the GCP’s steering committee.

That would make the melting of Greenland’s ice sheet inevitable, with enough water to raise sea levels by about 7m, she said.

“Things are happening very, very fast,” Le Quere said. “We already know this is a huge problem but the actions that are taken now are extremely important in determining the rate of warming.”

The pact being discussed at the global talks will replace the Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012. Under that agreement, 37 developed countries agreed to cut emissions from 1990 levels by a combined 5 percent by 2012.

The largest emitter, the US, never signed Kyoto, and developing countries did not set targets.

Developed countries are responsible for 80 percent of historic emissions and it’s up to them to take the lead in slashing output of the gas, Le Quere said. “This is a reality check of what’s actually happening: The industrialized countries have to cut their emissions much, much faster than they are doing now.” she said.

“There’s a lot of effort to curb emissions of CO2 but the scale is not big enough. It has to be on a much, much larger scale. The scale of the problem is enormous,” she said.

Uncertain times for Taiwan, the US and PRC
　

By Nat Bellocchi
Saturday, Sep 27, 2008, Page 8

The US and Taiwan are going through a very uncertain period. Both are dealing with very difficult economic problems. In addition, the US faces a tight election, and Taiwan has a new government that is focused on working with China. The future of the US-Taiwan relationship is not as clear as in the past.

The US is suffering economic mayhem that has government officials and banking organizations struggling with enormous debt. It has established an unusual group made up of the executive branch — the president and senior economic members of the administration — and Congress.

Problems such as these usually take weeks or months, if not longer, to solve. On issues so complicated and wide-ranging, it is difficult for Congress to clear executive requests quickly. It is even more difficult when the administration and the Congress are not under one party’s control.

Last week, quite unusually, Congress gave the head of the Treasury the authority to refinance two major mortgage organizations. As all this unfolds, the two presidential candidates, though mindful of the rapidly unfolding crisis, will continue campaigning. The many differences between them on a wide set of problems will continue, to be sure, but it is their differences on economic problems that will be key.

Recent US presidential elections have been very close, and this is likely to be the case again this year. In Congressional elections, most media outlets seem to believe the Democrats will win more seats. That might determine the extent of reform on economic issues now in the spotlight.

While the US has problems of a global magnitude, Taiwan’s issues are no less important.

Although it is a democracy, voters are polarized on what their country should be. Despite this, it is an advanced nation, with internationally acknowledged high-tech capabilities. However, Taiwan’s lack of international acceptance puts it under constant pressure to change.

Conflict between the two main political parties continues. The Democratic Progressive Party attempted over eight years to fortify the idea that Taiwan is a separate, sovereign state, but when the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) returned to power earlier this year, the focus changed toward a closer relationship with China.

Agreements have been signed on charter flights between Taiwan and China and increasing numbers of Chinese visitors are being allowed into Taiwan, but neither has helped the economy. There will be more meetings in the months ahead between the two sides, but despite Taiwan’s efforts, little is heard from China. In addition, there is nothing that suggests Beijing will soften its line on obstructing international participation for Taiwan, even in isolated cases.

Then there is the relationship with the US. Many think Taiwan’s new government will continue to improve relations with China. Inevitably, this will substantially influence Taiwan and changes in this relationship could affect US relations.

In recent years, Taiwan, the US and China have seen many changes in their relationships. The US has had problems in the Middle East and is now battling an economic crisis. Taiwan, meanwhile, has had problems with the US and China.

The US will have to spend time rearranging its economy and may have to continue to focus on the Middle East, therefore persisting in its habit of paying less attention to other world issues.

Taiwan, meanwhile, will likely spend much of its efforts determining how to relate to China while continuing to work on closer relationships with other countries.

Nat Bellocchi is a former chairman of the American Institute in Taiwan and a special adviser to the Liberty Times Group. The views expressed in this article are his own.