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
Fast food chain McDonald's is to raise prices by up to NT$5 on some products at its restaurants across Taiwan, starting on Wednesday next week, the company announced today. The prices of all extra value meals and sharing boxes are to increase by NT$5, while breakfast combos and creamy corn soup would go up by NT$3, the company said in a statement. The price of the main items of those meals, if ordered individually, would remain the same. Meanwhile, the price of a medium-sized lemon iced tea and hot cappuccino would rise by NT$3, extra dipping sauces for chicken nuggets would go up
Yangmingshan National Park’s Qingtiangang (擎天崗) nature area has gone viral after a park livestream camera observed a couple in the throes of intimate congress, which was broadcast live on YouTube, drawing large late-night crowds and sparking a backlash over noise, bright lights and disruption to wildlife habitat. The area’s livestream footage appeared to show a couple engaging in sexual activity on a picnic table in the park on Friday last week, with the uncensored footage streamed publicly online. The footage quickly spread across social media, prompting a tide of visitors to travel to the site to “check in” and recreate the
GROUNDED: A KMT lawmaker proposed eliminating drone development programs and freezing funding for counterdrone systems, despite China’s adoption of the technology China has deployed attack drones at air bases near the Taiwan Strait in a strategy aimed at overwhelming Taiwan’s air defense systems through saturation attacks, the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said. The council’s latest quarterly report on China said that satellite imagery and open-source intelligence indicate that the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) had converted retired J-6 fighter jets into J-6W drones, which the PLA has stationed at six air bases near Taiwan, five in China’s Fujian Province and one in Guangdong Province. The report cited J. Michael Dahm, a senior fellow at the US-based Mitchell Institute, as saying that China has
Carrefour Taiwan is to begin using a new name from the start of July, but it cannot divulge the name until then, the chairman of the supermarket chain's parent company said today. President Chain Store Co chairman Lo Chih-hsien (羅智先) was asked by reporters after a shareholders' meeting to confirm whether the company has settled on a new name for the supermarket brand. In March, the government-registered name of two Carrefour Taiwan branches was quietly changed to "Le Chia Kang" (樂家康) in Chinese, raising speculation that has been selected as the name. Lo said that because of local regulations and contractual obligations, the
RSS