Kaohsiung residents who eat dog or cat meat are to face a stiff fine under regulations passed by the Kaohsiung City Council yesterday.
Kaohsiung Animal Protection Office Director Hsu Jung-pin (徐榮彬) said the Animal Protection Act (動物保護法) bans the commercial killing of cats and dogs and the sale of their carcasses, but the city government wanted to further clamp down on the practice of eating dog or cat meat, or any food that contains their meat.
Under the law, individuals who kill dogs or cats can be fined between NT$50,000 and NT$250,000.
The Kaohsiung Regulations on Animal Protection and Autonomy (高雄市動物保護自治條例), which was passed by the city council and must go through the formality of being submitted to the Cabinet as a reference before taking effect, is to provide a legal basis to issue fines of between NT$15,000 and NT$75,000 to people who eat dog or cat meat.
“[We] hope the steep fines will deter the practice of eating dog meat and stop people from selling or killing the animals,” Hsu said.
The regulations also try to encourage employers to educate migrant workers from countries where catching and killing dogs might be acceptable to avoid the practice.
Under the new law, if migrant workers are found to have killed or eaten dog or cat meat in a dormitory provided by the employer, the employer will also be fined, the office said.
The new regulations also prohibit the running of pet shops in venues on the third story or higher of a building and require animal issues to be included as part of life education.
Other regulations include prohibiting the use of pointed objects to keep animals away; requiring public or private establishments that cause injury or abuse to animals due to poor management to provide necessary medical care; and requiring that pets entering or leaving a public venue be on a leash or in a cage.
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
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,
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