Starting on Monday, the Council of Agriculture (COA) will impose a ban on apple snail farming as the country’s latest effort to curb the invasive species and prevent it from damaging crops.
Pomacea canaliculata, or channeled apple snails, were introduced from Argentina into Taiwan in 1979. However, their flavor failed to win over the taste buds of Taiwanese consumers, forcing farmers to abandon their cultivation efforts. However, they are good adapters and quickly spread out of control into farmland, causing damage to rice paddies and aquatic plants.
Now, a new use for the mollusk might have prompted a boom in snail farming.
Biotechnology companies in Taiwan have reportedly spent huge sums of money developing a technology that extracts astaxanthin — a natural antioxidant used in anti-aging supplements — from the eggs of the mollusk. These companies estimate the annual value of skincare and healthcare products that use the substance could reach NT$12 billion (US$417 million).
However, the council has responded with a ban on the farming of the snails.
According to Fei Wen-chi (費雯綺) of the Bureau of Animal and Plant Health Inspection and Quarantine, her agency allocates NT$20 million annually to combat the spread of apple snails, which are ranked among the top 10 most invasive species in Taiwan.
Fei said those who illegally breed channeled apple snails would be subject to fines of between NT$30,000 and NT$150,000, and would be required to destroy their stock.
Her agency also said that biotech companies should purchase snails from farmers who catch them in their fields, which will reduce their numbers in the wild.
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