The World Organization for Animal Health (OIE) plans to establish an East Asian task force to combat the spread of African swine fever (ASF), which would include Taiwan, the Council of Agriculture said yesterday.
The council has been on alert since the first ASF case was reported in China’s Liaoning Province in early August, the Bureau of Animal and Plant Health Inspection and Quarantine said.
As of yesterday, 89 cases of ASF have been reported in 21 Chinese provinces and regions, it said.
Given the grave threat posed by the disease, the OIE Regional Representation for Asia and the Pacific wants to bring together officials from Taiwan, China, Hong Kong, Japan, Mongolia and the two Koreas, with the first meeting to be held next month, the bureau said.
From September until Sunday, 319 travelers have been fined NT$15,000 (US$486) each for trying to bring meat products into Taiwan from areas affected by ASF or foot-and-mouth disease, in accordance with Article 45-1 of the Statute for Prevention and Control of Infectious Animal Disease (動物傳染病防治條例), the bureau said.
There were 26 cases last week, down from 56 between Nov. 12 and Nov. 18, it said.
Of the 534 meat products it has confiscated for testing, only three packages of Chinese sausages — intercepted at airports in Taichung and Kaohsiung and a harbor in Kinmen County — were found to have the ASF virus, the bureau said.
While the legislature on Nov. 30 passed an amendment to the statue to increase the maximum fine for bringing in illegal meat products from NT$15,000 to NT$1 million, the legislation has not yet been promulgated by the Presidential Office, so the old fines still apply, Council of Agriculture Deputy Minister Huang Chin-cheng (黃金城) said.
Regarding a call yesterday by Democratic Progressive Party lawmakers for the government to established a higher-level task force to prevent ASF from spreading to this nation, Huang said the Executive Yuan would activate the Central Emergency Operation Center in case of an outbreak of ASF.
The council has scheduled a drill for Friday next week that would simulate an outbreak of ASF in Pingtung County’s Kanding Township (崁頂) and Yanpu Fishing Port (鹽埔漁港), as well as at Kaohsiung International Airport, with personnel from the Coast Guard Administration and the Customs Administration taking part, he said.
The inspection equipment and data transmission system for new robotic dogs that Taipei is planning to use for sidewalk patrols were developed by a Taiwanese company, the city’s New Construction Office said today, dismissing concerns that the China-made robots could pose a security risk. The city is bringing in smart robotic dogs to help with sidewalk inspections, Taipei Deputy Mayor Lee Ssu-chuan (李四川) said on Facebook. Equipped with a panoramic surveillance system, the robots would be able to automatically flag problems and easily navigate narrow sidewalks, making inspections faster and more accurate, Lee said. By collecting more accurate data, they would help Taipei
TAKING STOCK: The USMC is rebuilding a once-abandoned airfield in Palau to support large-scale ground operations as China’s missile range grows, Naval News reported The US Marine Corps (USMC) is considering new sites for stockpiling equipment in the West Pacific to harden military supply chains and enhance mobility across the Indo-Pacific region, US-based Naval News reported on Saturday. The proposed sites in Palau — one of Taiwan’s diplomatic allies — and Australia would enable a “rapid standup of stored equipment within a year” of the program’s approval, the report said, citing documents published by the USMC last month. In Palau, the service is rebuilding a formerly abandoned World War II-era airfield and establishing ancillary structures to support large-scale ground operations “as China’s missile range and magazine
STATS: Taiwan’s average life expectancy of 80.77 years was lower than that of Japan, Singapore and South Korea, but higher than in China, Malaysia and Indonesia Taiwan’s average life expectancy last year increased to 80.77 years, but was still not back to its pre-COVID-19 pandemic peak of 81.32 years in 2020, the Ministry of the Interior said yesterday. The average life expectancy last year increased the 0.54 years from 2023, the ministry said in a statement. For men and women, the average life expectancy last year was 77.42 years and 84.30 years respectively, up 0.48 years and 0.56 years from the previous year. Taiwan’s average life expectancy peaked at 81.32 years in 2020, as the nation was relatively unaffected by the pandemic that year. The metric
A 72-year-old man in Kaohsiung was sentenced to 40 days in jail after he was found having sex with a 67-year-old woman under a slide in a public park on Sunday afternoon. At 3pm on Sunday, a mother surnamed Liang (梁) was with her child at a neighborhood park when they found the man, surnamed Tsai (蔡), and woman, surnamed Huang (黃), underneath the slide. Liang took her child away from the scene, took photographs of the two and called the police, who arrived and arrested the couple. During questioning, Tsai told police that he had met Huang that day and offered to
RSS