Taiwan and Canada have signed letters for an organic equivalence arrangement that took effect on May 30, the Canadian Trade Office in Taipei said on Facebook yesterday.
The letters were signed and exchanged between Lyzette Lamondin, executive director of food safety and consumer protection for the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, and Agriculture and Food Agency Director-General Hu Jong-i (胡忠一) on May 27, it said.
According to an overview posted on the official Web site of the Government of Canada, “the recognitions apply to agricultural products of plant origin, and processed foods of plant origin, livestock and livestock products, as well as aquaculture products grown or produced in each jurisdiction or whose final processing or packaging occurs within each jurisdiction.”
The accord allows organic products certified in Taiwan or Canada to be sold as organic in either market.
Information from the Agriculture and Food Agency shows that Canada is Taiwan’s second-largest source of imports for organic products, after the US.
On Thursday last week, Taiwan and the US also signed an organic equivalence arrangement, which according to the Agriculture and Food Agency, was the fifth such deal reached, after Japan, New Zealand, Australia and Canada.
EUROPEAN TARGETS: The planned Munich center would support TSMC’s European customers to design high-performance, energy-efficient chips, an executive said Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s largest contract chipmaker, yesterday said that it plans to launch a new research-and-development (R&D) center in Munich, Germany, next quarter to assist customers with chip design. TSMC Europe president Paul de Bot made the announcement during a technology symposium in Amsterdam on Tuesday, the chipmaker said. The new Munich center would be the firm’s first chip designing center in Europe, it said. The chipmaker has set up a major R&D center at its base of operations in Hsinchu and plans to create a new one in the US to provide services for major US customers,
The Ministry of Transportation and Communications yesterday said that it would redesign the written portion of the driver’s license exam to make it more rigorous. “We hope that the exam can assess drivers’ understanding of traffic rules, particularly those who take the driver’s license test for the first time. In the past, drivers only needed to cram a book of test questions to pass the written exam,” Minister of Transportation and Communications Chen Shih-kai (陳世凱) told a news conference at the Taoyuan Motor Vehicle Office. “In the future, they would not be able to pass the test unless they study traffic regulations
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