The fiscal, taxation and environmental agencies need to use this basic information to develop their own supervisory and inspection competencies. The vast majority of issues can be completed within the central government’s computer systems. A standardized information system would be able to ensure food and environmental safety in Taiwan.
However, the Ministry of Economic Affairs would rather spin some kind of fantasy of food safety to try to fool the public, wasting hundreds of millions of dollars of taxpayers’ money in the process. That it cannot ensure food safety through regular channels is simply pathetic. Government agencies are not fit for the purposes, with each ministry setting up its own accreditation, muddying the waters and meddling in things they have no business meddling in.
The government is not a group of mutually independent entities. It is incumbent upon public servants to carry out inspections from which the information can be correlated and verified, but at the moment, all the different government departments are acting independently of each other, all playing their own tune. In the resultant cacophony, the public has real cause for concern.
Jay Fang is chairman of the Green Consumers’ Foundation.
Translated by Paul Cooper