Some farmers who raise black pigs in Pingtung County have cut their supply by 20 percent, or stopped producing them entirely, due to repercussions of the government’s efforts to keep African swine fever out of the nation.
To lower the risk of spreading the disease, agricultural authorities have enforced stricter laws demanding that pig farmers who use food waste as feed switch to commercial feed, said Tseng Jen-te (曾仁德), a member of the only pig-farming cooperative in the county that raises only black sows for breeding.
About 12 percent of domestically raised pigs are fed food waste, and most are black pigs, Council of Agriculture data showed.
Photo: Chiu Chih-jou, Taipei Times
The cooperative, formed by 62 hog farmers, produces an average of 120,000 to 150,000 black piglets per year, and has a 20 percent share of the nation’s black pig market.
Since swine fever prevention measures came into effect last year, the number of black sows raised by the cooperative has dropped from more than 10,000 to between 7,000 and 8,000, he said.
For hog farmers — mostly small-scale farmers — who found it hard to stop using food waste as feed for economic reasons, the government required that they purchase equipment to heat and sterilize the food scraps before feeding them to the pigs, but some could not afford to do so, Tseng said.
Many old farmers decided to exit the industry for good at this juncture, Tseng said.
Demand for the meat of black pigs has long exceeded supply, making the decreased production a problem, he added.
Most of Pingtung’s black pig farmers make a profit from breeding piglets, and while they often work alone, a potential solution could be forming alliances to build a complete black pig industry chain to sustain them, he said.
Pork from the county’s Liouduei region (六堆) comes from special breeds and has a unique and tasty flavor, he said.
These pigs have been bred by generations of local hog farmers and could be the strongest candidate to represent Taiwan in the international pork market, he said.
Speaking on the sidelines of a promotion event for Liouduei black pork last week, Hakka Affairs Council Deputy Minister Chung Kung-shao (鍾孔炤) said that the council would work with local hog farmers to stabilize the industry.
SECURITY: Starlink owner Elon Musk has taken pro-Beijing positions, and allowing pro-China companies to control Taiwan’s critical infrastructure is risky, a legislator said Starlink was reluctant to offer services in Taiwan because of the nation’s extremely high penetration rates in 4G and 5G services, the Ministry of Digital Affairs said yesterday. The ministry made the comments at a meeting of the legislature’s Transportation Committee, which reviewed amendments to Article 36 of the Telecommunications Management Act (電信管理法). Article 36 bans foreigners from holding more than 49 percent of shares in public telecommunications networks, while shares foreigners directly and indirectly hold are also capped at 60 percent of the total, unless specified otherwise by law. The amendments, sponsored by Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Ko
The military has spotted two Chinese warships operating in waters near Penghu County in the Taiwan Strait and sent its own naval and air forces to monitor the vessels, the Ministry of National Defense (MND) said. Beijing sends warships and warplanes into the waters and skies around Taiwan on an almost daily basis, drawing condemnation from Taipei. While the ministry offers daily updates on the locations of Chinese military aircraft, it only rarely gives details of where Chinese warships are operating, generally only when it detects aircraft carriers, as happened last week. A Chinese destroyer and a frigate entered waters to the southwest
The eastern extension of the Taipei MRT Red Line could begin operations as early as late June, the Taipei Department of Rapid Transit Systems said yesterday. Taipei Rapid Transit Corp said it is considering offering one month of free rides on the new section to mark its opening. Construction progress on the 1.4km extension, which is to run from the current terminal Xiangshan Station to a new eastern terminal, Guangci/Fengtian Temple Station, was 90.6 percent complete by the end of last month, the department said in a report to the Taipei City Council's Transportation Committee. While construction began in October 2016 with an
NON-RED SUPPLY: Boosting the nation’s drone industry is becoming increasingly urgent as China’s UAV dominance could become an issue in a crisis, an analyst said Taiwan’s drone exports to Europe grew 41.7-fold from 2024 to last year, with demand from Ukraine’s fight against Russian aggression the most likely driver of growth, a study showed. The Institute for Democracy, Society and Emerging Technology (DSET) in a statement on Wednesday said it found that many of Taiwan’s uncrewed aerial vehicle (UAV) sales were from Poland and the Czech Republic. These countries likely transferred the drones to Ukraine to aid it in its fight against the Russian invasion that started in 2022, it said. Despite the gains, Taiwan is not the dominant drone exporter to these markets, ranking second and fourth
RSS