Farmers’ associations have criticized what they said is the government’s lax approach toward inspections aimed at preventing produce smuggled from China entering the nation.
The associations highlighted statistics released by the Coast Guard Administration (CGA) showing that smuggled produce confiscated during the Lunar New Year holiday — when smuggling operations peak — dropped 80 percent last year compared to 2013 and stood at just 0.6 percent of the 2008 level.
The farmers said that there is still a huge quantity of smuggled produce on the market, and accused President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) administration of colluding with smugglers working with Chinese.
Statistics released by the coast guard show that the volume of illegal agricultural products smuggled from China fell from 6,632 tonnes in 2008 to 57 tonnes in 2011, before dropping further to 41 tonnes last year.
The amount of mushrooms confiscated last year was 16 tonnes, while neither garlic nor tea leaves were found.
No Chinese tea leaves have been confiscated since 2011, when authorities discovered two tonnes of contraband.
Taiwan Tea Farmers Self-help Group chief executive officer Chen Chien-nung (陳鑑農) said the coast guard had failed to intercept smuggled Chinese tea leaves over the past three years.
“You can find as many Chinese tea leaves as you want in the marketplace,” Chen said, adding that if the Ma administration requires proof, he could immediately provide evidence.
He said that most tea circulating in distribution channels is brewed from Chinese tea leaves, which leads him to believe that at least two freight containers, or 36 tonnes, of Chinese tea leaves disguised as being from other countries are being smuggled into the nation on a daily basis.
The severity of the problem has driven down the average price of local tea buds from NT$80 per kilogram to between NT$20 and NT$30 per kilogram, Chen said.
Taiwan Mushroom Research and Development Association head Chen Tsung-ming (陳宗明) said that smugglers are using Vietnam, where mushrooms are not a common crop, as a springboard for smuggling in Chinese mushrooms.
The problem has lowered the amount of confiscated Chinese mushrooms to merely a small fraction of the actual amount of Chinese mushrooms circulating in the market, Chen Tsung-ming said.
He said that even though 215 tonnes of mushrooms said to have been imported from Vietnam had been proven by the Council of Agricultures’ Agriculture and Food Agency to be from China, customs officials let the consignments enter the nation.
Taiwan Garlic Farmers Association director-general Lin Chun-fu (林俊甫) said that no smuggled Chinese garlic was found last year, due to an excess in garlic output, which caused a sharp decrease in garlic prices.
He said that garlic prices have rallied to about NT$25 per kilogram — double the price from last year. He called on the coast guard to redouble inspection efforts. Otherwise, the profits of garlic farmers would continue to suffer, he said.
CGA Deputy Minister Yu Ming-hsi (尤明錫) rejected allegations of lax inspections, saying that there are many ways through which illegal Chinese produce enters Taiwan, and shipping is only one of them.
He said people detest Chinese products and put great emphasis on food safety, which discourages merchants from smuggling Chinese produce.
LOUD AND PROUD Taiwan might have taken a drubbing against Australia and Japan, but you might not know it from the enthusiasm and numbers of the fans Taiwan might not be expected to win the World Baseball Classic (WBC) but their fans are making their presence felt in Tokyo, with tens of thousands decked out in the team’s blue, blowing horns and singing songs. Taiwanese fans have packed out the Tokyo Dome for all three of their games so far and even threatened to drown out home team supporters when their team played Japan on Friday. They blew trumpets, chanted for their favorite players and had their own cheerleading squad who dance on a stage during the game. The team struggled to match that exuberance on the field, with
Taiwanese paleontologists have discovered fossil evidence that pythons up to 4m long inhabited Taiwan during the Pleistocene epoch, reporting their findings in the international scientific journal Historical Biology. National Taiwan University (NTU) Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology associate professor Tsai Cheng-hsiu (蔡政修) led the team that discovered the largest snake fossil ever found in Taiwan. The single trunk vertebra was discovered in Tainan at the Chiting Formation, dated to between 400,000 and 800,000 years ago in the Middle Pleistocene, the paper said. The area also produced Taiwan’s first avian fossil, as well as crocodile, mammoth, saber-toothed cat and rhinoceros fossils, it said. Discoveries
Taiwanese paleontologists have discovered fossil evidence that pythons up to 4m long inhabited Taiwan during the Pleistocene epoch, reporting their findings in the international scientific journal Historical Biology. National Taiwan University (NTU) Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology associate professor Tsai Cheng-hsiu (蔡政修) led the team that discovered the largest snake fossil ever found in Taiwan. A single trunk vertebra was discovered in Tainan at the Chiting Formation, dated to between 800,000 to 400,000 years ago in the Middle Pleistocene, the paper said. The area also produced Taiwan’s first avian fossil, as well as crocodile, mammoth, sabre-toothed cat and rhinoceros fossils, it said. Discoveries
Whether Japan would help defend Taiwan in case of a cross-strait conflict would depend on the US and the extent to which Japan would be allowed to act under the US-Japan Security Treaty, former Japanese minister of defense Satoshi Morimoto said. As China has not given up on the idea of invading Taiwan by force, to what extent Japan could support US military action would hinge on Washington’s intention and its negotiation with Tokyo, Morimoto said in an interview with the Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times) yesterday. There has to be sufficient mutual recognition of how Japan could provide
RSS