Government leniency on the butchering of live animals in traditional markets is inhumane and could facilitate the transmission of bacteria, animal rights activists said yesterday during a protest in front of the Executive Yuan, an allegation the Council of Agricultural (COA) later rebutted.
Dressed in chicken suits, protesters from Environment and Animal Society of Taiwan (EAST) called on the government to deliver on its promise to outlaw the killing of live animals in traditional markets starting next month.
Since August 2006, the council has promised NT$500 million (US$15.7 million) to subsidize more than 760 traditional meat stands across the country to purchase refrigerated display cases to phase out live slaughter, EAST director Chen Yu-min (陳玉敏) said.
PHOTO: LIU HSIN-DE, TAIPEI TIMES
However, government inaction has disappointed many vendors who ended up using their freezers as storage space, she said.
Blood and innards left in the open following the live slaughter of poultry, Chen said, has turned traditional markets into hotbeds for bacteria such as salmonella, adding that there have been reports in Vietnam and Indonesia of women and children falling ill after prolonged exposure to the conditions in traditional markets.
The activists said bacteria levels in freshly killed chickens in traditional markets are twice as high as chickens that were electrically immobilized in legally approved slaughtering plants.
EAST urged consumers to abandon their traditional way of thinking that “live killing guarantees freshness” and realize that such methods are extremely inhumane and distressing to the animals.
The council denied it had performed a U-turn on its policy, saying most traditional market poultry vendors had agreed to use refrigeration. It also said it was providing education on how to slaughter the animals in a humane and sanitary manner.
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
LIKE FAMILY: People now treat dogs and cats as family members. They receive the same medical treatments and tests as humans do, a veterinary association official said The number of pet dogs and cats in Taiwan has officially outnumbered the number of human newborns last year, data from the Ministry of Agriculture’s pet registration information system showed. As of last year, Taiwan had 94,544 registered pet dogs and 137,652 pet cats, the data showed. By contrast, 135,571 babies were born last year. Demand for medical care for pet animals has also risen. As of Feb. 29, there were 5,773 veterinarians in Taiwan, 3,993 of whom were for pet animals, statistics from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency showed. In 2022, the nation had 3,077 pediatricians. As of last
XINJIANG: Officials are conducting a report into amending an existing law or to enact a special law to prohibit goods using forced labor Taiwan is mulling an amendment prohibiting the importation of goods using forced labor, similar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) passed by the US Congress in 2021 that imposed limits on goods produced using forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. A government official who wished to remain anonymous said yesterday that as the US customs law explicitly prohibits the importation of goods made using forced labor, in 2021 it passed the specialized UFLPA to limit the importation of cotton and other goods from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region. Taiwan does not have the legal basis to prohibit the importation of goods