The ban on poultry imports from Japan has remained in force since January last year, a Council of Agriculture official in charge of animal quarantine and inspection affairs said yesterday.
The official made the remarks after the Japanese government announced over the weekend that bird flu has been detected in chickens at a farm in northeastern Japan and that restrictions have been imposed on shipments of poultry and eggs from the area.
"We have enforced a ban on Japanese poultry imports since H5N1 bird flu infections were confirmed in that country in January 2004," the official said, adding that the ban has not once been lifted since that time.
Amid reports of new bird flu infections in Japan, the council will heighten its alert and step up inspection and quarantine measures to avert any avian flu-infected poultry from entering the country, the official said.
The Japanese government said Sunday that more than 800 chickens at a farm in Mitsukaido City in Ibaraki Prefecture, located just northeast of Tokyo, have died since April, and recent tests on some found they were infected with the H5N2 strain of bird flu.
H5N2 is regarded as less dangerous strain of the bird flu virus compared to the H5N1 strain, which has led to the death and slaughter of tens of millions of birds across Asia since late 2003. The H5N1 strain has also crossed over to humans, killing 38 people in Vietnam, 12 in Thailand and four in Cambodia over the past couple of years.
SPACE VETERAN: Kjell N. Lindgren, who helps lead NASA’s human spaceflight missions, has been on two expeditions on the ISS and has spent 311 days in space Taiwan-born US astronaut Kjell N. Lindgren is to visit Taiwan to promote technological partnerships through one of the programs organized by the US for its 250th national anniversary. Lindgren would be in Taiwan from Tuesday to Saturday next week as part of the US Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs’ US Speaker Program, organized to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, the American Institute in Taiwan (AIT) said in a statement yesterday. Lindgren plans to engage with key leaders across the nation “to advance cutting-edge technological partnerships and inspire the next generation of scientists and engineers,”
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus yesterday said it opposes the introduction of migrant workers from India until a mechanism is in place to prevent workers from absconding. Minister of Labor Hung Sun-han (洪申翰) on Thursday told the Legislative Yuan that the first group of migrant workers from India could be introduced as early as this year, as part of a government program. The caucus’ opposition to the policy is based on the assessment that “the risk is too high,” KMT caucus secretary-general Lin Pei-hsiang (林沛祥) said. Taiwan has a serious and long-standing problem of migrant workers absconding from their contracts, indicating that
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