The smuggling of animals and animal products is putting Taiwan at risk from non-endemic diseases, animal inspection officials said at a congress of Asian veterinary associations, which opened in Taipei yesterday.
A total of 884,365kg of smuggled frozen livestock was found last year and 332,266kg had been seized by October this year, according to the Bureau of Animal and Plant Health Inspection and Quarantine.
"The smuggling of livestock products is a bigger threat than drugs or guns," said Weng Chung-nan (
"An epidemic can break out just as easily as a matchstick can be lit," Weng said.
Foot-and-mouth disease (FMD,
Taiwan experienced an FMD epidemic among pigs in 1997 and again in cattle in 1999. Before the FMD outbreak, Taiwan's pork exports were worth approximately US$1.6 billion per year. But exports of pork products were paralyzed after news spread among importing countries that Taiwan was suffering an epidemic of the disease.
Currently, Taiwan only exports sterilized and processed pork to Japan, Sung said.
The 1999 spread of cattle FMD began in Kinmen (
Smuggling animals and animal products from China to Kinmen is reported to be rampant.
Taiwan has never opened its markets to livestock products from the mainland because China is listed as a country in which there are many infectious diseases.
With the so-called "small three links" (
The "small three links" are direct communication, transportation and trade links between China and Taiwan's outlying island groups of Kinmen and Matsu (
"We will treat the `small three links' as international relations. So all the quarantine standards we use to inspect products from other countries are also applicable to China," Sung said.
The Council of Agriculture has requested a budget of NT$100 million to set up two stations with between 30 to 40 officials in Kinmen and Matsu for the sake of animal and plant health inspections following the establishment of the "small three links."
The veterinary conference, which is taking place at the Taipei International Convention Center, attracted more than 800 participants from over 50 countries.
Apart from animal epidemics, diseases which will harm both humans and animals constitute one of the core topics being addressed by the symposium.
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