As of Sunday, 71 travelers had been caught trying to bring in pork products from China, the Council of Agriculture said yesterday, calling on people not to endanger the domestic pork industry by smuggling meat from countries affected by African swine fever.
China has seen 25 cases of the disease since it was first reported in Shenyang, Liaoning Province, on Aug. 3. It has affected seven provinces — Liaoning, Henan, Anhui, Heilongjiang, Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Jilin — as well as the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, the Bureau of Animal and Plant Health Inspection and Quarantine said.
“The fever is raging severely in China,” but the bureau can only obtain updates about the situation via circuitous means, Animal Quarantine Division chief Peng Ming-hsing (彭明興) said, adding that apart from China and Russia, the fever has not been found in other Asian nations.
Over the past three weeks, 71 people tried to bring Chinese pork products to Taiwan through Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport and Taipei International Airport (Songshan Airport), eight of whom tried to import uncooked products, the bureau said.
As raw meat is more likely to contain the virus, the eight were given the maximum fine of NT$15,000 in line with Article 45-1 of the Statute for Prevention and Control of Infectious Animal Disease (動物傳染病防治條例), while the other 63 were fined the minimum amount of NT$3,000, as they only brought jerky, Peng said.
Council of Agriculture Minister Lin Tsung-hsien (林聰賢) on Sept. 7 announced that a vendor in Taipei’s Nanmen Market (南門市場) was suspected of selling Jinhua ham imported from China, but the bureau has not found any more violations, possibly because vendors have hidden banned products, Peng said.
An online rumor that some infected Chinese pork has been imported through Thailand and Vietnam is false, the bureau said, adding that it does not open pork imported from nations with pig-related diseases, including from Southeast Asia.
South Korean K-pop girl group Blackpink are to make Kaohsiung the first stop on their Asia tour when they perform at Kaohsiung National Stadium on Oct. 18 and 19, the event organizer said yesterday. The upcoming performances will also make Blackpink the first girl group ever to perform twice at the stadium. It will be the group’s third visit to Taiwan to stage a concert. The last time Blackpink held a concert in the city was in March 2023. Their first concert in Taiwan was on March 3, 2019, at NTSU Arena (Linkou Arena). The group’s 2022-2023 “Born Pink” tour set a
CPBL players, cheerleaders and officials pose at a news conference in Taipei yesterday announcing the upcoming All-Star Game. This year’s CPBL All-Star Weekend is to be held at the Taipei Dome on July 19 and 20.
The Taiwan High Court yesterday upheld a lower court’s decision that ruled in favor of former president Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) regarding the legitimacy of her doctoral degree. The issue surrounding Tsai’s academic credentials was raised by former political talk show host Dennis Peng (彭文正) in a Facebook post in June 2019, when Tsai was seeking re-election. Peng has repeatedly accused Tsai of never completing her doctoral dissertation to get a doctoral degree in law from the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) in 1984. He subsequently filed a declaratory action charging that
The Hualien Branch of the High Court today sentenced the main suspect in the 2021 fatal derailment of the Taroko Express to 12 years and six months in jail in the second trial of the suspect for his role in Taiwan’s deadliest train crash. Lee Yi-hsiang (李義祥), the driver of a crane truck that fell onto the tracks and which the the Taiwan Railways Administration's (TRA) train crashed into in an accident that killed 49 people and injured 200, was sentenced to seven years and 10 months in the first trial by the Hualien District Court in 2022. Hoa Van Hao, a
RSS