The Council of Agriculture on Monday announced a ban on a fipronil spray product from today, following incidents of tainted eggs and bee deaths last month.
The council banned the product’s use in agricultural produce in January last year, but it was still permitted for other uses, Bureau of Animal and Plant Health Inspection and Quarantine Deputy Director-General Feng Hai-tung (馮海東) said yesterday.
The council banned the product — a 4.95 percent fipronil spray — because it is likely to miss its target and land on nearby plants and animals, Feng said, adding that there is a maximum fine of NT$5 million (US$166,279) for breaches of the regulations.
Fipronil was last month confirmed as being the cause of bee deaths in Nantou County’s Puli Township (埔里), while eggs at 45 poultry farms were found to contain traces of fipronil above legal limits, he said.
About 0.033 micrograms of fipronil residue was found in each bee, he said.
Farmers and retailers should return the banned product to where it was purchased, the council said.
Those selling, displaying or storing insecticide in breach of the Agro-pesticides Management Act (農藥管理法) face fines of between NT$1 million and NT$5 million and prison terms of six months to five years, the council said.
Three fipronil products are still allowed to be used: 250 grams per liter fipronil for rice seeds, as well as 0.3 percent and 0.0143 percent pellets for pests, it said.
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
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
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