The Council of Agriculture (COA) yesterday opened sampling centers for processed agricultural products at its research stations across the nation in an effort to alleviate an imbalance in crop supply and demand, and generate up to NT$60 billion (US$1.94 billion) in added revenue.
The council, after opening its first center at the Hualien District Agricultural Research and Extension Station in December last year, has opened additional centers at the Agricultural Research Institute in Taichung and at council research and extension stations in Tainan and Changhua, Pingtung and Taitung counties.
The centers offer technical assistance for drying, crushing, grinding and baking agricultural produce, and farmers can ask center personnel to help make product samples before attempting mass production, COA Minister Chen Chi-chung (陳吉仲) said at a ceremony in Pingtung.
The council hopes that small farmers can make and sell their own food products, just as European farmers turn wheat into flour on their farms, so that the overproduction of certain crops would no longer be a problem, Chen said.
Processing companies are regulated by the Ministry of Economic Affairs and food safety is overseen by the Ministry of Health and Welfare, but the council has negotiated with the ministries to move small-scale agricultural processing companies under its purview, he said.
The council also proposed draft amendments to the Agricultural Production and Certification Act (農產品生產及驗證管理法), which is pending review by the Executive Yuan, with other minor regulations to be amended, he said.
An estimated 500 agricultural processors, who could not obtain operation permits due to their relatively small scale, would be allowed to process crops and build factories covering a maximum of 200m2 of agricultural land, he said.
Food processing generates annual revenue of NT$600 billion, Chen said, adding that the council hopes that revenue from the processing of agricultural produce would increase to NT$60 billion over 10 years.
Factories built on farmland must limit themselves to primary processing methods — drying, crushing, grinding and baking, COA Department of Science and Technology Deputy Director-General Kuo Kun-feng (郭坤?) 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