Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) legislator Wang Sing-nan (王幸男) asked for more stringent checks to be performed at the nation's entry points after he warned that the smuggling of birds from China may be a critical flaw in the nation's defense against bird flu.
Wang pointed out that according to reports from a recent issue of Taiwan Weekly, a lot of birds in Taiwan's pet shops are smuggled in from China, and many of those, are carried in via air passengers hand baggage, and that these birds could possibly pass on infectious diseases to the passengers during these flights.
"The government has not produced a strategy against this threat to date. Smuggled birds could easily trigger a premature outbreak of bird flu, even before the arrival of migratory birds this winter," he said.
In response, Lu Tsai-yih (呂財益), deputy director of the Department of Investigation for the Customs authorities said that they would issue orders within the next two days requiring x-ray checks for the hand luggage of all air passengers coming from Southeast Asia and other "sensitive regions."
Director of the Division of Animal Quarantine under the Bureau of Animal and Plant Health Inspection and Quarantine, Chiang Hsien-chong (蔣先沖), further emphasized that all livestock should come in through the proper channels and undergo relevant health checks.
"If animals have an infectious disease, they could affect the livestock industry and the public's health," he said.
He also said that in response to the urging of Premier Frank Hsieh (謝長廷) over the last few months, penalties for smuggling livestock are in the process of being increased from 3 years to 7 years imprisonment, and that the levels of fines for smuggling offenses may be raised to between NT$150,000 (US$4,450) and NT$3,000,000. However, these changes have yet to be passed by the Executive Yuan and the Legislative Yuan.
Meanwhile officials from Taiwan's Coast Guard Administration said that since a presidential meeting held on Aug. 19 about national safety, patrols had increased, with checks on every boat entering national ports being performed as of Oct. 21.
It was during one of these checks at Taichung harbor on Oct. 14 that the 2,778 birds smuggled from China that were carrying the H5N1 virus were discovered and subsequently culled.
The public were further urged to report any information regarding smuggling, saying that rewards of up to NT$3.6 million were on offer. The number to call to report news on smuggling is 118.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching