■ LABOR
Taiwan labor ‘mostly free’
The Washington-based Freedom House has listed Taiwan as “mostly free” in a report on labor rights it released earlier this week. In “The Global State of Workers’ Rights: Free Labor in a Hostile World,” Taiwan and Japan, along with 36 other countries, were included in the “mostly free” group — the second best of five classifications used by the independent watchdog organization. South Korea, Australia, New Zealand and 38 other countries received the top ranking of “free”; China, Singapore, Afghanistan, Cambodia and 22 others were in the “repressive” group; and 14 countries including Myanmar, Laos, North Korea and Vietnam received the worst ranking of “very repressive.” After assessing trade unions and worker freedom in 165 countries, Freedom House said that one-third of the global population lives in societies in which “workers’ rights suffer a significant degree of repression.”
■AGRICULTURE
COA thanks fruit buyers
The Council of Agriculture (COA) yesterday expressed gratitude toward 16 enterprises and government units for purchasing overproduced fruit. Companies such as Yulon Group, First Bank, Quanta Computer and government ministries including the Ministry of National Defense bought 1,480 tonnes of bananas, papayas, guavas and oranges this year to help farmers handle the glut, the council said. Agriculture and Food Agency Director-General Chen Wen-deh (陳文德) said measures have been taken to deal with the problem, including decreasing farm lands devoted to fruit. For example, the state-run Taiwan Sugar Corp has cut the amount of farmland it leases to banana farmers from 1,900 hectares in 2006 to 500 hectares this year, Chen said. Banana sales often slow in the domestic market in July and August because many other types of fruit are available in the summer, council officials said.
■AGRICULTURE
Kinmen cattle shipped
Fourteen yellow cattle bred on Kinmen were shipped to Taiwan proper on Friday, the first live cattle to be sent outside Kinmen since a 10-year ban came to an end at the end of last year. The ban was launched in 1999 because of an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease, almost causing the collapse of Kinmen’s livestock industry. Before the ban, there were about 5,000 head of cattle in Kinmen, local breeder Hsueh Hseng-shen (薛承琛) said. “Kinmen paid a painful price” for an epidemic that resulted from smuggling cattle from China, he said. Hsueh said Kinmen was a perfect place to raise cattle thanks to Kaoliang Liquor distillery cellars, which provide high-quality feed — distillers’ grains — for livestock.
■TRADE
Processed meats get nod
The COA said yesterday that Taiwan would be able to sell about 50 types of processed meat products to China after the two sides complete negotiations on the quarantine and inspection of agricultural products. The 50 items will include cooked pork, chicken and dumplings, said Hsu Kuei-sen (許桂森), chief of the Animal Husbandry Department. However, Hsu said he was not sure when the arrangements on quarantine and inspection would be finalized. All 50 products would carry the certified agricultural standards (CAS) logo, he said, adding that the COA has registered Taiwan’s CAS logo in China twice over the past five years to prevent it from being used by Chinese businesses. Taiwan launched the CAS program in 1989 to promote its agricultural products.
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
REVENGE TRAVEL: A surge in ticket prices should ease this year, but inflation would likely keep tickets at a higher price than before the pandemic Scoot is to offer six additional flights between Singapore and Northeast Asia, with all routes transiting Taipei from April 1, as the budget airline continues to resume operations that were paused during the COVID-19 pandemic, a Scoot official said on Thursday. Vice president of sales Lee Yong Sin (李榮新) said at a gathering with reporters in Taipei that the number of flights from Singapore to Japan and South Korea with a stop in Taiwan would increase from 15 to 21 each week. That change means the number of the Singapore-Taiwan-Tokyo flights per week would increase from seven to 12, while Singapore-Taiwan-Seoul
POOR PREPARATION: Cultures can form on food that is out of refrigeration for too long and cooking does not reliably neutralize their toxins, an epidemiologist said Medical professionals yesterday said that suspected food poisoning deaths revolving around a restaurant at Far Eastern Department Store Xinyi A13 Store in Taipei could have been caused by one of several types of bacterium. Ho Mei-shang (何美鄉), an epidemiologist at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Biomedical Sciences, wrote on Facebook that the death of a 39-year-old customer of the restaurant suggests the toxin involved was either “highly potent or present in massive large quantities.” People who ate at the restaurant showed symptoms within hours of consuming the food, suggesting that the poisoning resulted from contamination by a toxin and not infection of the
BAD NEIGHBORS: China took fourth place among countries spreading disinformation, with Hong Kong being used as a hub to spread propaganda, a V-Dem study found Taiwan has been rated as the country most affected by disinformation for the 11th consecutive year in a study by the global research project Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem). The nation continues to be a target of disinformation originating from China, and Hong Kong is increasingly being used as a base from which to disseminate that disinformation, the report said. After Taiwan, Latvia and Palestine ranked second and third respectively, while Nicaragua, North Korea, Venezuela and China, in that order, were the countries that spread the most disinformation, the report said. Each country listed in the report was given a score,