The Council of Agriculture on Thursday said it is planning to increase the maximum fine for illegally bringing meat products into the country to NT$300,000.
“The council is to amend the law and raise the fine from NT$15,000 to NT$300,000 to stop such actions,” Deputy Minister Chen Chi-chung (陳吉仲) said.
Anyone caught carrying meat products, whether raw or processed, from other countries into Taiwan is to be fined NT$18,000, the council said on Monday as part of efforts to prevent African swine fever from entering Taiwan.
“Amid repeat offenses, serious and minor infractions are to be subject to the same punishment,” Chen said on Thursday.
The council is to present a draft amendment to the Executive Yuan as soon as possible to hopefully be approved by the Legislative Yuan before the current legislative session ends, he said.
Bureau of Animal and Plant Health Inspection and Quarantine Director-General Feng Hai-tung (馮海東) confirmed that the council is seeking heavier fines, as African swine fever is spreading fast in China.
From Sept. 1 to Sunday last week, 181 people traveling from China were found to be carrying meat, with 25 carrying raw pork, council statistics showed.
The 25 offenders received fines of NT$15,000 each, while the rest were each fined NT$3,000, statistics showed.
Since the outbreak of African swine fever in China on Aug. 3, the disease has spread to eight provinces and the situation is deteriorating, the bureau said, warning that a local outbreak could decimate the local hog-farming industry.
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:
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