bone-in beef products, and he reiterated that there were no trade-offs in the deal.

The president was commenting on the legislature's efforts to amend the act governing food sanitation to introduce more stringent checks on U.S. bone-in beef.

The law amendment is expected to clear the legislative floor Nov. 17, but there is still a big disparity between the versions submitted by the opposition Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) and the ruling Kuomintang (KMT).

Ma said in a meeting with Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng, Premier Wu Den-yih, members of the KMT caucus and other top-level officials from relevant government agencies that his administration's decision to allow imports of U.S. bone-in beef was not meant to pander to the U.S. and he reiterated that the government will stick to the principles of safety and necessity on the beef issue.

"The health of our citizens was always the top priority in the negotiations. Our number one concern is 'safety, safety and safety', " Ma said. There were absolutely no trade-offs with the U.S. during the negotiations, he added.

Ma said he welcomed the Legislature's decision to amend the food sanitation act to stipulate stricter inspections and ensure public health, but he also warned that the revision should not violate the beef protocol with the U.S.

Otherwise, it will not only harm Taiwan-U.S. relations but also damage Taiwan's credibility in the international arena, he cautioned.

The Cabinet-level Department of Health (DOH) announced on Oct. 23 that Taiwan would expand imports of U.S. beef, based on a protocol that officials of the two countries had agreed to the previous day in Washington, D.C.

Under the protocol, Taiwan will allow the importation of U.S.

bone-in beef, ground beef, intestines, spinal cords and processed beef from cattle younger than 30 months, and which have not been contaminated with "specific risk materials" (SRMs).

Ma stressed that the chances of people getting new variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease from eating U.S. beef are extremely low -- 1.5 in 10 billion in the case of offal and 5.7 in 10 billion in the case of ground beef. The risk of contracting the disease from eating bone-in beef is 2.7 in 100 billion, and from boneless beef 7.1 in 1 trillion, he added.

U.S. beef products should be "pretty reliable, " he said, noting that 50 of the 64 countries that import U.S. beef have no restrictions on the products and that more than 2.1 billion consumers, including people in Taiwan, eat U.S. beef.

Meanwhile, DPP spokesman Tsai Chi-chang said Wednesday that the KMT is using the amendment as a way to endorse the protocol.

He said the KMT's version of the amendment does not specify a ban on imports of beef parts that are highly hazardous to human health, and is "completely divergent" from the consensus reached last week in the negotiations between the KMT and DPP legislative caucuses.

According to Tsai, the caucuses had agreed that highly hazardous products such as offal, ground beef and skulls should not be allowed into the Taiwan market before the amendment cleared the legislature floor, and that the new act should ban importations of these products.

In protest against the government's decision to expand U.S. beef imports, DPP members and its Chairwoman Tsai Ing-wen will join a Nov. 14 march initiated by Tainan County Magistrate Su Huan-chih, Tsai said.

The DPP is urging the public to participate in the demonstration to show their dissatisfaction and voice their concerns to the government, he added.

(By Lee Shu-hwa, Wen Kwai-siang and Rachel Chan)