Coast guard personnel yesterday confiscated raw pork from a Chinese ship in the nation’s contiguous zone near Penghu County, officials said.
The oil supply vessel was detected in waters about 20 nautical miles (37km) southwest of the county’s Cimei Township (七美) and increased speed after a coast guard patrol broadcast several warnings, the Coast Guard Administration said in a news release.
Coast guard personnel intercepted and boarded the ship, finding 10kg of raw pork packed in its onboard refrigerator, Fleet Branch official Chan Wen-chung (詹文中) said by telephone, adding that the ship’s crew claimed the pork was for their own consumption.
Photo: CNA
The pork was transferred to Council of Agriculture (COA) officials for disposal, and the coast guard took the six crew members to Magong City (馬公) for further questioning to determine whether they contravened the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例), Chan added.
COA Deputy Minister Huang Chin-cheng (黃金城) said that samples of the pork would be tested for African swine fever, while the remainder would be destroyed.
The crew might not be fined for storing the pork, even if the samples tested positive for the disease, as that they were not attempting to smuggle the pork into Taiwan, he said.
Since China reported its first infection of African swine fever in early August last year, the disease has spread to 23 provinces and regions, with a total of 104 cases reported as of Wednesday last week, although no new cases have been reported since then, council data showed.
China might have stopped reporting new infections to the World Organization for Animal Health, because it has been unable to keep the disease from spreading, Huang said.
The interval between new confirmations of infected pork products seized at customs has decreased from 64 days initially to less than a week, indicating that the disease is spreading unabated in China, he said.
As of yesterday, 12 seized pork products from China had tested positive for the disease, with the latest two, which were pork sausage products, confirmed on Thursday last week, council data showed.
To bolster quarantine checks at customs, the council is seeking funds from the Executive Yuan’s reserve budget of NT$500 million (US$16.2 million) to increase the number of sniffer dogs and X-ray scanners, but review of the proposed budget has been delayed due to a Cabinet reshuffle, Huang said, adding that he hopes the proposal will be approved soon.
The combined effect of the monsoon, the outer rim of Typhoon Fengshen and a low-pressure system is expected to bring significant rainfall this week to various parts of the nation, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. The heaviest rain is expected to occur today and tomorrow, with torrential rain expected in Keelung’s north coast, Yilan and the mountainous regions of Taipei and New Taipei City, the CWA said. Rivers could rise rapidly, and residents should stay away from riverbanks and avoid going to the mountains or engaging in water activities, it said. Scattered showers are expected today in central and
COOPERATION: Taiwan is aligning closely with US strategic objectives on various matters, including China’s rare earths restrictions, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said Taiwan could deal with China’s tightened export controls on rare earth metals by turning to “urban mining,” a researcher said yesterday. Rare earth metals, which are used in semiconductors and other electronic components, could be recovered from industrial or electronic waste to reduce reliance on imports, National Cheng Kung University Department of Resources Engineering professor Lee Cheng-han (李政翰) said. Despite their name, rare earth elements are not actually rare — their abundance in the Earth’s crust is relatively high, but they are dispersed, making extraction and refining energy-intensive and environmentally damaging, he said, adding that many countries have opted to
FORCED LABOR: A US court listed three Taiwanese and nine firms based in Taiwan in its indictment, with eight of the companies registered at the same address Nine companies registered in Taiwan, as well as three Taiwanese, on Tuesday were named by the US Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) as Specially Designated Nationals (SDNs) as a result of a US federal court indictment. The indictment unsealed at the federal court in Brooklyn, New York, said that Chen Zhi (陳志), a dual Cambodian-British national, is being indicted for fraud conspiracy, money laundering and overseeing Prince Holding Group’s forced-labor scam camps in Cambodia. At its peak, the company allegedly made US$30 million per day, court documents showed. The US government has seized Chen’s noncustodial wallet, which contains
SUPPLY CHAIN: Taiwan’s advantages in the drone industry include rapid production capacity that is independent of Chinese-made parts, the economic ministry said The Executive Yuan yesterday approved plans to invest NT$44.2 billion (US$1.44 billion) into domestic production of uncrewed aerial vehicles over the next six years, bringing Taiwan’s output value to more than NT$40 billion by 2030 and making the nation Asia’s democratic hub for the drone supply chain. The proposed budget has NT$33.8 billion in new allocations and NT$10.43 billion in existing funds, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said. Under the new development program, the public sector would purchase nearly 100,000 drones, of which 50,898 would be for civil and government use, while 48,750 would be for national defense, it said. The Ministry of
RSS