The number of illegal meat products seized at Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport has declined, while 16 new X-ray scanners used to facilitate luggage checks are to begin operating at the airport today, Council of Agriculture (COA) Minister Chen Chi-chung (陳吉仲) said yesterday.
Since China first reported an African swine fever outbreak in August last year, the council has kept stepping up quarantine measures against the disease, especially as the Lunar New Year holiday starts today and cross-strait traffic is expected to increase.
From Jan. 18 to Wednesday last week, airport officials had seized 1,495 illegal meat products, while from Thursday last week to Tuesday, the number dropped to 1,037, proving that the quarantine measures are effective in curbing illegal imports, Chen said in a video posted on the council’s Facebook page.
Photo: Chu Pei-hsiung, Taipei Times
The products were seized by the airport’s aviation police, who manually check carry-on luggage before they reach customs, he said, adding that tourists dumping illegal meat imports would not receive fines at this stage.
All carry-on luggage belonging to visitors from China, Hong Kong and Macau, which the council has identified as higher-risk areas, has been manually checked by aviation police since Jan. 16, Chen said.
The government purchased the 16 X-ray machines to scan luggage and save time, he added.
All check-in luggage is already required to be scanned, the council said previously.
The council on Dec. 18 last year raised the fines for people carrying illegal pork products to NT$200,000 (US$6,505) for the first offense and NT$1 million for repeat offenses.
Between then and Thursday, customs officials had confiscated 87 Chinese pork products, council data showed.
The amount of fines issued has not decline over the past few weeks, but the number of visitors receiving checks has increased, Chen said, adding that he expects the number of fines to drop significantly.
Separately yesterday, the Environmental Protection Administration said that as of Thursday the number of farms approved to use kitchen leftovers as pig feed had increased to 736, up from 274 before the disease broke out in China.
While some hog farms have switched to commercial feed to reduce the risk of contracting the disease, the agency today began inspecting the 581 farms that do not have permits to use leftovers as pig feed, Bureau of Environmental Inspection Deputy Inspector-General Lin Jso-hsiang (林左祥) said.
Farms illegally collecting leftovers from households would face a fine between NT$1,200 and NT$6,000 under the Waste Disposal Act (廢棄物清理法), and those illegally collecting leftovers from restaurants and businesses would face a fine of more than NT$6,000, Lin said.
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