In light of increasingly frequent media reports about cruelty to animals, lawmakers across party lines passed a resolution on Thursday demanding the Council of Agriculture (COA) set up an animal protection division to improve care for stray animals. They threatened not to review the council’s budget if it fails to do so.
A survey conducted by the Environment and Animal Society of Taiwan (EAST) over the past three years found that 104 of 122 animal shelters around the nation failed to meet the standards of the Animal Protection Act (動物保護法).
More than 90 percent of the temporary animal detention centers designated by local governments to keep stray animals do not meet the minimum requirements, EAST said.
EAST showed the legislature’s Economic Affairs Committee video clips of dogs and cats being kept in local government-operated centers near garbage fields, cemeteries and slaughterhouses. Some of the animals were fed rotten food and dirty water or were left to die.
At present, environmental protection workers responsible for garbage are also responsible for catching stray dogs and cats.
EAST said the government should set up a agency dedicated to animal protection to deal with the stray animal problem, which has become increasingly serious as people abandon their pets when they find the animals to troublesome or costly to deal with.
Council of Agriculture Vice Minister Wang Cheng-ten (王政騰) said animals placed in animal shelters or local governments centers are humanely killed if they are not claimed or adopted in seven days.
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Shyu Jong-shyoung (徐中雄) questioned the council’s attitude, noting that earmarked only NT$370 million (US$11.4 million) over the past 10 years to deal with stray animals and just NT$10 million last year.
Committee members suggested the council deliver a report on how it plans to improve animal shelters and treatment of strays, including stringently punishing people who abuse animals or animal protection workers who neglect their jobs. The lawmakers suggested the council setting up a complaint hotline and drawing up a timetable for establishing an animal protection agency.
If the council fails to follow through on the suggestions, the lawmakers said they would boycott the council’s budget.
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
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
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