Officials and agriculture experts said on Sunday there were growing concerns over Taiwan*s plant species protection amid legal loopholes in China, even though the two sides signed an intellectual property right (IPR) protection agreement last week.
Taiwan and China signed the IPR pact along with the Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement (ECFA) on Tuesday last week to reinforce cross-strait efforts to protect intangible assets.
However, Warren Kuo (峎?嬬), a professor at the Department of Agronomy at National Taiwan University, said that as China has lagged behind international efforts in preventing the illegal use of plants registered by other countries, Taiwan risks a lack of appropriate protection for plant species despite signing the IPR agreement.
Kuo said Taiwan closely follows the latest version of the International Convention for Protection of New Varieties of Plants, revised in 1991, while China still adheres to the 1978 version of the convention.
Under the 1991 version, Taiwanese farmers are not allowed to retain and plant seeds registered by others without licensing, except for certain rice varieties designated by the government for food security.
However, the 1978 version of the convention allows Chinese farmers to plant Taiwan-developed seeds once they retain Taiwanese species through any channels, although they are prevented from trading in Taiwan-registered seeds.
Hsu Han-ching (?齾昑), chief secretary of the Council of 〝Agriculture*s Food and Agriculture Agency, said he understood the concerns and urged China to revise its law as soon as possible so that it follows the 1991 version of the convention.
Hsu said he was worried that changes to laws in China would proceed slowly and that the pace of the revisions would not meet the demand for protection amid a further boom in cross-strait exchanges once the ECFA is implemented.
The official said many Chinese farmers have started to raise 〝Taiwan-registered plants, because it is easy to transport them off Taiwan.
He said Taiwanese customs authorities should tighten their control on plant smuggling to better protect Taiwan-developed varieties.
Hsu said the problems would not be solved until Taiwan and China continue talks on IPR protection after the IPR agreement and the ECFA go into effect.
Also See: ECFA will harm plant variety protection
FLU SEASON: Twenty-six severe cases were reported from Tuesday last week to Monday, including a seven-year-old girl diagnosed with influenza-associated encephalopathy Nearly 140,000 people sought medical assistance for diarrhea last week, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said on Tuesday. From April 7 to Saturday last week, 139,848 people sought medical help for diarrhea-related illness, a 15.7 percent increase from last week’s 120,868 reports, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said. The number of people who reported diarrhea-related illness last week was the fourth highest in the same time period over the past decade, Lee said. Over the past four weeks, 203 mass illness cases had been reported, nearly four times higher than the 54 cases documented in the same period
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