The government is to begin negotiations with Japan to obtain certificates of origin and radiation test results for Japanese food imports, Food and Drug Administration (FDA) officials said.
The talks are to start this month between the FDA and the Interchange Association, Japan, aiming to expand the list of products checked for radiation to 11 categories including fresh produce, seafood, dairy, baby food, bottled water, processed food and meat, the agency said.
Taiwan has banned food products from Japan’s Fukushima Prefecture, the site of the 2011 nuclear meltdown that followed an earthquake and massive tsunami, and four other regions affected by the disasters.
The food and drug agency is hoping to obtain certificates and test results on items imported from the rest of Japan due to continued concerns over radiation.
The aim is for both countries to conduct radiation tests and share the results for examination over next three months, FDA Deputy Director-General Chiang Yu-mei (姜郁美) said.
The government wants the Japanese government to follow the same procedures it uses for exports to the EU — attaching radiation test results and origin certificates — Chiang said.
However, the agency said Japan has given a cool response to the proposal in initial discussions, maintaining that all exports to Taiwan are already up to standard.
Taiwan’s Atomic Energy Council has been checking nine categories of Japanese food products for radiation since the nuclear disaster. About 50,000 items have passed the tests.
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