The government is later this month to start checking carry-on luggage arriving from Thailand, the latest country to be identified as an area of high risk for an African swine fever outbreak, the Council of Agriculture said yesterday.
Since outbreaks of the disease were reported in China in August last year and in Vietnam last month, travelers arriving from the two nations, as well as Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Hong Kong and Macau, have been required to undergo carry-on luggage checks at customs.
Thailand has been included in the high-risk areas list because it is adjacent to China and Vietnam, and has many flights to Taiwan, Bureau of Animal and Plant Health Inspection and Quarantine Director-General Feng Hai-tung (馮海東) said.
Photo: Huang Yao-cheng, Taipei Times
The council is working on related administrative procedures and would inform Thai authorities soon, he said.
All carry-on luggage from high-risk areas must undergo inspection by customs at airports, Feng said, adding that manual checks by aviation police have been reduced since additional X-ray scanners were installed last month.
Feng made the remarks on the sidelines of an international symposium in Taipei on control and prevention of the disease.
The two-day event, which was organized by National Taiwan University’s College of Bio-Resources and Agriculture, ends today.
More than 300 Taiwanese officials, academics and industry representatives were joined by experts from the US, Russia, Vietnam, Japan, South Korea and Thailand at the symposium, but China did not send any official representatives, despite having been invited, council Deputy Minister Huang Chin-cheng (黃金城) told reporters.
“It would be great if it was the case” that China has controlled the disease, as Beijing has claimed, said Dirk Pfeiffer, a professor of veterinary epistemology at the University of London’s Royal Veterinary College.
However, he said he is pessimistic about the claim.
Pfeiffer expressed admiration for Taiwan’s strict checks at customs, but said that “nothing is 100 percent safe.”
The council as of yesterday had sent 1,067 Chinese pork products seized at customs for testing, of which 30 tested positive for African swine fever, including 11 confirmed last month and one on Wednesday, council data showed.
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