Don't lower barriers to cross-strait trade yet

On March 20, 1997, news broke of an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease among pigs in Taiwan. The government ordered 3.8 million pigs slaughtered.

Before the outbreak, there were 25,357 pig farmers in Taiwan, but afterwards only 13,022 remained. The number of pigs fell from more than 10 million to about 6 million. Pork could no longer be exported and many Taiwanese were afraid to eat pork.

Almost half of all pig farmers went bankrupt and had to change professions. Overall, the epidemic caused losses of about NT$270 billion (US$8.8 billion) in total. Since the outbreak, another NT$1 billion a year has been spent each year on measures to prevent a repeat of the outbreak.

The emergence of the disease hit pork farmers hard, but it also damaged the nation's image. Eleven years later, foot-and-mouth disease has still not been eradicated in Taiwan.

I have found through my research, which included DNA analysis, that foot-and-mouth disease arrived with infected pigs smuggled from China.

On March 10, 2003, the first case of SARS was identified in Taiwan. After that, more than 600 more cases were reported, resulting in the deaths of more than 100 people. Although the epidemic had begun to retreat by the end of May and was brought completely under control by the end of June, it caused a public scare that resulted in economic losses and its impact was even more severe than that of the foot-and-mouth disease epidemic.

SARS came from China, too.

In 2006, Chinese authorities announced that a disease causing high fever in pigs had struck 10 coastal provinces. Beijing said that approximately 2 million pigs were infected and 400,000 died. Unofficial statistics put the figures at 70 million dead pigs.

That disease is still spreading and has caused a shortage of pork in China. With the price of pork increasing sharply, China is forced to import pork from the US to meet its immediate needs.

Chinese authorities are worried that this will influence the pork supply during the Beijing Olympics.

Although the disease has been identified as a mutation of the virus that causes blue ear disease, or porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome, there is no vaccine.

Recently a case of the disease was reported in Vietnam and it is believed to have spread to the Philippines as well.

If a cross-strait common market is realized, the chances are high that Taiwan's pigs will be infected. If that happens, pig farmers who managed to survive the foot-and-mouth disease will face a fresh catastrophe.

A common market would require frequent transportation across the Taiwan Strait of people and goods, which would also increase the threat of human diseases crossing from China.

China affects Taiwan's economy in many ways.

An estimated 1 million Taiwanese businesspeople travel to China regularly. If each of them spends an average of NT$500 per day, their total annual spending is NT$500 million per day.

This means that billions of NT dollars are spent in China each year, while Taiwan's food and drinks industry, taxis and entertainment industry are having difficulties.

The cross-strait common market proposed by Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) president-elect Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) would entail further opening of Taiwan's economy further to China. The number of businesspeople traveling there would increase quickly.

How are these ideas supposed to increase domestic consumption and revive the country's economy?

Lai Shiow-suey is an honorary professor in the Department of Veterinary Medicine at National Taiwan University.

Translated by Anna Stiggelbout