Food-labelling defeat a major blow for Tsang

Donald Tsang Yam-kuen's administration suffered a major setback yesterday when two proposed exemptions from the future food-labelling law were blocked by pan-democratic and grass-roots lawmakers, being rejected by a single vote.

Liberal Party chairman James Tien Pei-chun, who had lobbied hard for the government's amendments - which included an exemption from the new law for health foods sold in small volumes - said Secretary for Food and Heath York Chow Yat-ngok should consider how to shoulder the responsibility. Mr Tien said the results indicated Mr Tsang's professed executive-led governance was in crisis. 'In foreign countries, a lot of governments under these circumstances might request that the secretary consider stepping down,' he said, although he did not call directly for Dr Chow's resignation.

Both the government amendments, to exempt all foods with a sales volume under 30,000 a year from the regulations as well as allowing food products to claim zero-gram trans-fat according to the definition of 'zero' in their original jurisdiction - were blocked. Out of the 53 lawmakers present yesterday, only 26 supported the amendments.

Mr Tien asked whether the government, Dr Chow in particular, had done enough to lobby lawmakers.

However, voting records showed the government's lobbying efforts had succeeded with Patrick Lau Sau-shing and Raymond Ho Chung-tai. Both had pledged to oppose the amendments, but voted for them in the vote.

The failure of the amendments means the food-labelling regulations as originally drafted will take effect after a two-year grace period, with a review of the regulations a year later. Since the government had introduced the regulations through a negative vetting procedure, under which they would go ahead unless legislators found something objectionable in them, they cannot be withdrawn.