TAIWAN TODAY, HERE TOMORROW

Mark my words, this will come to our illustrious nation as well. But we'll doubtless drag our feet about it and be in the back of the pack as usual.

"Taiwan, for religious and health reasons, plans to require food manufacturers to provide detailed identification of vegetarian food, the Department of Health said on Thursday. Under the new rule, food manufacturers must identify the content of the veggie food according to five categories on the outside of the food package.

The five categories are pure veggie, milk veggie, egg veggie, egg/milk veggie and plant veggie."

Dunno if we'll go all the way to labeling "plant veggie," which deals specifically with Buddhist spice restrictions, but still, it's gonna happen.

BIG MEAT'S ABOUT-FACE ON DOWNERS

This is pretty big: "In a significant reversal, major meat and dairy industry groups on Tuesday backed a total ban on so-called downer cattle from entering the food supply. Calls for such a ban have come from watchdog groups and some lawmakers in the wake of the massive beef recall from a Southern California slaughterhouse in February, but industry had resisted." Looks like the ban will go forward now, as it was Congressional pressure that supposedly led to the shift in stance.

UPDATE 4/30: Ha! How naive of me - the USDA, it seems, is fine with standing up to Big Meat as long as the agency is completely on the wrong side of the issue: USDA isn't on board with beef industry's downer cow ban

BACK ON THE CASE

Well, that was another little blogging hiatus, wasn't it?

I did prepare some posts during that interim but didn't manage to get them into Blogger, so I'll put them in first as they occurred before proceding with May posts.