The Council of Agriculture’s Taiwan Agricultural Chemicals and Toxic Substances Research Institute yesterday showcased the results of its collaboration with universities around the nation to monitor pesticide ingredients and residue levels, with officials saying that the initiative tested more than 12,000 pesticide samples and continues to ensure food safety for the public.
Institute Director Fei Wen-chi (費雯綺) told a press conference that “safe agriculture” has been one of the council’s major policies in recent years.
The policy aims to monitor the sources and residue levels of pesticides used on produce and is an improvement on former policies, which primarily focused on residue, she said.
In an effort to promote efficiency, the institute teamed up with seven universities, providing them with technological support and guidance so that pesticide developers could send samples to testing stations at the university nearest to them.
The seven universities are National Cheng Kung University, National Formosa University, National Pingtung University of Science, Meiho University, National Chung Hsing University, National Yilan University and National Taitung University.
Fei said that the tests are especially helpful when determining suitable pesticides for regional produce, such as abiu and hsiang-ju (Glossogyne tenuifolia), an antipyretic herb cultivated in Penghu.
She said the test sites offer farmers insights on how to maintain produce of lower demand or economic value, with information on frequency of pesticide use, maximum residue limits and pre-harvest intervals.
Among the topics covered yesterday was the management of eco-friendly biopesticide, including microbial pesticides, biochemical pesticides and organic pesticides.
Since biopesticides often need to go through a lengthy testing period involving animal experimentation, the testing stations help to share part of the institutes’ work, such as ingredient verification and bacterial analyses, thereby expediting the biopesticides’ registration process for developers and shortening technology licensing time, meaning qualified new biopesticides would be able to hit the market sooner, she said.
Fei said pesticide developers could bring questions regarding registration and residue analysis to the testing stations, which also function as information centers.
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