Max Baucus says, Don't Worry, All US Beef is Safe! Taiwanese People Say 「No, Thanks!」

Max Baucus, the powerful US Senate Finance Committee Chairman, who will be one of the key people responsible for ensuring that American taxpayers will not enjoy the same level of taxpayer-funded health care he does, has been trying to bully Taiwan into ignoring the will of its own people who are rightly concerned about their health, and whose democratically-elected legislature is concerned about being able to to monitor the potential presence of Mad Cow Disease in American beef.
Senator Max Baucus

Senator Max Baucus wants Taiwanese to eat more American beef.

While we American citizens were trying to get Baucus to provide us the same health care coverage he gets, he's been bullying the Taiwanese to import American ground beef and offal, despite their Taiwan's worries they cannot adequately screen American beef for Mad Cow Disease.

Says the New York Times:

The lawmakers' move to reinstate a ban on American ground beef and offal reflected public concern that Taiwanese health officials lack sufficient safeguards to prevent mad cow disease, a brain-wasting disease in cattle that in humans can cause a variant form, Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease.

After getting the hard sell from American Congress's beef-pushers, Taiwan's executive branch tried to drop an existing ban on certain US beef products to please people like Max Baucus, who wields a tremendous amount of influence with the Taiwanese government. But Taiwan happens to be a democracy — something Baucus might be familiar with — and both ruling and opposition party representatives in the legislature responded by choosing to protect its population from an American food safety system that seems to be constantly out-to-lunch.

Says Food Safety News:

Taiwan, like several other counties, totally banned U.S. beef after a cow was found suffering from Mad Cow Disease on a Yakima County, WA farm in 2003. In 2006, some U.S. beef was allowed back in, but not bone-in beef. The October protocol would end the ban.

In late December, Taiwan's ruling and opposition parties reached an agreement to amend the island nation's Food Sanitation Act to bar the import of bone-in and certain other beef products from the U.S.

Max Baucus claims in a condescending and vaguely threatening letter to the Taiwanese government that all 「all US beef is safe — including ground beef, offal, and processed products.」

People like Stephanie Smith, who nearly lost her life to E. Coli in hamburger meat, might beg to differ.

Stephanie Smith's life was shattered by e. coli in American ground beef

As New York Times' writer Michael Moss put it, 「eating ground beef is still a gamble. Neither the system meant to make the meat safe, nor the meat itself, is what consumers have been led to believe.」

The great thing about Taiwan is that it has a vibrant vegetarian and vegan culture, and it's very easy there to fresh healthy food that doesn't come from a slaughterhouse. If American business people want to improve trade relations with countries like Taiwan, whose people are not yet enslaved to the Standard American Diet, maybe they could start thinking about importing food that won't make them unhealthy or kill them. Maybe America could start exporting agricultural products that don't involve horrific cruelty to sentient beings in factory farms.

Frankly, I wish Max Baucus were more concerned about the health of the American people, and less concerned about profiting from the suffering of innocent cattle.