The Council of Agriculture (COA) yesterday announced new regulations governing imports of pet food, fertilizers and elvers in the face of public concern over radiation contamination in Japanese products.
The government had planned to lift a ban on food imports from Japan’s Gunma, Tochigi, Ibaraki and Chiba prefectures, which had been imposed due to fears that they were affected by the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant disaster in March 2011, but met strong public resistance.
Over the past year, the council has gathered public opinion regarding possible radioactive contamination in human foods as well as agricultural materials, COA Department of International Affairs Deputy Director-General Lin Chia-jung (林家榮) said.
While no pet food or elvers have been imported from the five prefectures since 2011, the council considers it necessary to set clear standards to allay public concerns, Lin said.
For pet food, the council has set a combined limit of 600 becquerels (Bq) of cesium-134 and cesium-137 per kilogram in a proposed amendment to the Regulations Governing Pet Food Manufacturers’ Reporting Management (寵物食品業者申報辦法).
Companies planning to import pet foods from the prefectures will have to file an application for radioactivity testing, he said, adding that products exceeding the standards would be destroyed at customs.
For elvers from Japan, the council set the limit at 100Bq of iodine-131 per kilogram, while the aggregate limit for cesium-134 and cesium-137 is 100Bq.
Fertilizer importers have to obtain a certificate and ensure that products imported from the prefectures contain no traces of radioactivity, the council said.
The new rules regarding elvers and fertilizers took effect yesterday, while the rules for pet food are to go into effect after 60 days, Lin said, adding that the council would inform the WTO about the new regulations for pet food.
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
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
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