The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Friday insisted there was no timetable discussed for lifting a ban on agricultural imports from prefectures affected by the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster, following a virtual meeting with Japan’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP).
Taiwan has banned imports of food products from five prefectures in Japan — Fukushima, Gunma, Chiba, Ibaraki and Tochigi — following a meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant in March 2011, which was triggered by a massive earthquake and tsunami.
Despite repeated protestations from the Japanese government, the restrictions have remained in place, and a November 2018 referendum saw Taiwan’s electorate vote overwhelmingly in favor of maintaining the ban.
Lo Chih-cheng (羅致政), a lawmaker from the DPP, who attended the virtual meeting with Japan’s LDP, said Taiwan would apply scientific data and use international standards when assessing the current ban.
Lo, who leads the DPP’s foreign affairs division, said both sides in the online dialogue had not discussed a timetable for lifting the ban.
The two-on-two virtual meeting was attended by Lo and his DPP counterpart Chiu Chih-wei (邱志偉), while Masahisa Sato, a member of Japan’s House of Councillors, the Diet’s upper house, and Akimasa Ishikawa, a member of House of Representatives, the Diet’s lower chamber, represented the LDP at the meeting.
Sato is the leader of the LDP’s foreign affairs division, while Ishikawa is the leader of the party’s economic and industrial affairs division.
According to Lo, the meeting had been scheduled to last for one hour but due to the heated discussions among the attendees, the meeting overran by 40 minutes.
Chiu said as Sato was from Fukushima and Ishikawa’s hometown was Ibaraki, both of the two Japanese lawmakers touched on Taiwan’s ongoing ban on food products from the prefecture, saying Japan’s central government, local governments, parliament, and the industrial sector have taken the issue very seriously.
Chiu said his Japanese wife came from Chiba so he had sensed that the food import ban was a big issue to Japan.
But, echoing Lo, he added that Taiwan’s government needed to ensure food safety for its population by applying scientific evidence and international standards before deciding whether to lift the ban.
Chiu said the two Japanese attendees agreed with the attitude held by the Taiwanese side regarding resolving the food safety issue.
Soon after the virtual meeting began, Sato held a shakya and Ishikawa held an orange, both fruits from Taiwan, to show their support for Taiwan’s agriculture industry, according to Lo.
Lo said that much time had been spent discussing Taiwan’s bid to join the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP).
Citing Sato, Lo said the LDP has included support for Taiwan’s bid to join the CPTPP into its election platform when the party sought to retain its parliamentary majority in October.
On Thursday, Taiwan’s Minister of Economic Affairs Wang Mei-hua (王美花) said she expected that because Japan had been playing a leading role in the CPTPP, the issue of lifting Taiwan’s import ban would be unavoidable.
In the meeting on Friday, Chiu said both sides talked about cooperation in semiconductor supplies at a time of a global chip supply shortage.
Chiu said that, from Taiwan’s perspective, competition from China in the semiconductor industry was escalating and that as a result, the supply chain issue has become an issue of national security.
Friday’s meeting was the second two-on-two virtual dialogue between the DPP and LDP following a meeting in August this year. The August meeting discussed military and national defense issues.
Source: Focus Taiwan News Channel