Regulations concerning the care and use of animals in laboratory research in Taiwan are becoming stricter as the enforcement of measures establishing institutional animal care and use committees take effect today.
Officials at the National Science Council (NSC) said yesterday that institutions falling under the authority of the Animal Protection Law (
Officials of the National Laboratory Animal Breeding and Research Center under the science council said yesterday that a committee installed at every research institution would supervise animal-research-related affairs.
One of the requirements for establishing a committee includes the hiring of a veterinarian or an equivalent expert with a certificate issued by training centers recognized by the central government.
"Key committee personnel will be in charge of supervising procedures for self monitoring in obtaining, breeding, managing and using animals in laboratory research," said Liang San-chi (
Other important duties of committee members, Liang added, include ensuring appropriate maintenance of facilities where animals are used in laboratory research and adequate veterinary care.
"We believe that proper management of animals in laboratory research will minimize the negative consequences of animal testing," Liang said.
A workshop to train such professionals will be held by the center for the very first time today. Some 150 experts from different research institutions are expectedly to receive the certification. The center will hold another workshop in November this year. Liang said that more than 300 experts will be qualified to serve as committee members within a year.
According to the Council of Agriculture, however, there are more than 500 institutions in need of such experts, such as research centers, hospitals, universities, biotech firms, pharmaceutical companies.
After next July, any institution lacking a committee will be fined between NT$20,000 and NT$100,000.
Animal welfare activists told the Taipei Times yesterday that they welcomed new measures which ensure the rights of animals.
"But we have reservations about the integrity of appointed committee members because they will be on the payroll of the institutions they supervise," said Chen Yu-min (陳玉敏) of the Environment & Animal Society of Taiwan.
"Waiving unnecessary animal experiments should have become the researchers' main concern," Chen said. She added that animal welfare activists can look forward to seeing committee members with diverse backgrounds, such as animal behavior, animal protection and psychology.
The budget for biotech research in Taiwan next fiscal year has been increased to NT$17 billion from NT$11.7 billion. Biotech is a priority of the government's business promotion activities.
"It [the increased budget] doesn't necessarily mean that Taiwan will need more animals for scientific research," NSC Chairman Wei Che-ho (魏哲和) said yesterday.
Wei said that the measures taking effect today would improve the image of Taiwan in the international community.
According to the NSC, Taiwan will do its best to become a leader in biotech research next year by spending NT$4 billion on planned national projects.
Science council chairman Wei and Academia Sinica President Lee Yuan-tseh (李遠哲) will head for Japan today to visit several biotech research centers including Tokyo University and the Tsukuba Science Park.
The Ministry of Transportation and Communications yesterday inaugurated the Danjiang Bridge across the Tamsui River in New Taipei City, saying that the structure would be an architectural icon and traffic artery for Taiwan. Feted as a major engineering achievement, the Danjiang Bridge is 920m long, 211m tall at the top of its pylon, and is the longest single-pylon asymmetric cable-stayed bridge in the world, the government’s Web site for the structure said. It was designed by late Iraqi-British architect Zaha Hadid. The structure, with a maximum deck of 70m, accommodates road and light rail traffic, and affords a 200m navigation channel for boats,
PRECISION STRIKES: The most significant reason to deploy HIMARS to outlying islands is to establish a ‘dead zone’ that the PLA would not dare enter, a source said A High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) would be deployed to Penghu County and Dongyin Island (東引) in Lienchiang County (Matsu) to force the Chinese military to retreat at least 100km from the coastline, a military source said yesterday. Taiwan has been procuring HIMARS and Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS) from the US in batches. Once all batches have been delivered, Taiwan would possess 111 HIMARS units and 504 ATACMS, which have a range of 300km. Considering that “offense is the best defense,” the military plans to forward-deploy the systems to outlying islands such as Penghu and Dongyin so that
WHAT WAS ALL THAT FOR? Jaw Shaw-kong said that Cheng Li-wen had pushed for more drastic cuts and attacked him, just for the outcome to be nearly identical to his bill The legislature yesterday passed a supplementary budget bill to fund the purchase of separate packages of US military equipment, with the combined amount of spending capped at NT$780 billion (US$24.8 billion). The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) used their legislative majority to pass the bill, which runs until 2033 and has two main funding provisions. One was for NT$300 billion of arms sales already approved by the US for Taiwan on Dec. 17 last year, the other was for NT$480 billion for another arms package expected to be announced by Washington. The bill, which fell short of the NT$1.25
‘CLEAR MESSAGE’: The bill would set up an interagency ‘tiger team’ to review sanctions tools and other economic options to help deter any Chinese aggression toward Taiwan US Representative Young Kim has introduced a bill to deter Chinese aggression against Taiwan, calling for an interagency “tiger team” to preplan coordinated sanctions and economic measures in response to possible Chinese military or political action against Taiwan. “[Chinese President] Xi Jinping [習近平] has directed the People’s Liberation Army to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027. China has a plan. America should have one too,” Kim said in a news release on Thursday last week. She introduced the “Deter PRC [People’s Republic of China] aggression against Taiwan act” to “ensure the US has a coordinated sanctions strategy ready should
RSS