The Council of Agriculture should immediately ban the use of battery cages for egg-laying ducks and other animals, the Environment and Animal Society of Taiwan (EAST) said on Monday.
The organization held a news conference in front of the Legislative Yuan in Taipei to call attention to the practice, which many farmers use for its convenience and low cost.
A video played by EAST showed ducks with bloodied feet due to long hours of standing on battery cage wire.
Photo: CNA
The practice has hindered the export of duck eggs to EU countries and, with it, the development of the industry, the organization said.
Most duck farmers in Taiwan have adopted cage-free methods, but some still use battery cages that are only as big as an A4 piece of paper and restrict access to water, EAST researcher Tsun Fang-chu (寸舫筑) said.
The EU in 2012 banned the use of battery cages for egg-laying chickens, while a European Citizens’ Initiative last year to end battery-cage farming garnered a record number of signatories, Tsun said.
More than half of the nation’s exported duck eggs go to the US, although California — the state with the highest ethnic Chinese population — is set to ban the production and sale of eggs produced using battery cage farming from 2022, he said.
This means Taiwan’s duck farmers only have one year to transform the industry, Tsun added.
There are only 20 duck egg farms that still utilize cages, accounting for less than 10 percent of the industry, said Lee Yi-chien (李宜謙), head of the council’s poultry farming section.
The council a few years ago assembled a team of experts to help farms assess and improve their facilities, and in 2018 published a manual to explain best practices and how to establish a cage-free environment, Lee said.
As the farms are the livelihood of many people, the government cannot just order them closed, Lee said, adding that the council is instead providing guidance and low-interest loans to help farmers transition to cage-free facilities.
Each farm is eligible for a subsidy of NT$1 million (US$34,334) and five have already taken advantage of the program, Lee said.
The council plans to phase out cages at the facilities within five years, he added.
New Power Party Legislator Chen Jiau-hua (陳椒華) said that the time frame is too long, adding that the goal could be achieved within a year.
Chen urged the council to raise the subsidy amount.
Cage farming is on its way out, Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Hung Shen-han (洪申翰) said.
The council should discuss the situation at each of the 20 farms with industry actors, then convene a meeting to decide how to conform to international market trends to resolve the matter as quickly as possible, Hung said.
With government assistance and free access to information, battery cage farming can soon be a thing of the past, he added.
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
LIKE FAMILY: People now treat dogs and cats as family members. They receive the same medical treatments and tests as humans do, a veterinary association official said The number of pet dogs and cats in Taiwan has officially outnumbered the number of human newborns last year, data from the Ministry of Agriculture’s pet registration information system showed. As of last year, Taiwan had 94,544 registered pet dogs and 137,652 pet cats, the data showed. By contrast, 135,571 babies were born last year. Demand for medical care for pet animals has also risen. As of Feb. 29, there were 5,773 veterinarians in Taiwan, 3,993 of whom were for pet animals, statistics from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency showed. In 2022, the nation had 3,077 pediatricians. As of last
XINJIANG: Officials are conducting a report into amending an existing law or to enact a special law to prohibit goods using forced labor Taiwan is mulling an amendment prohibiting the importation of goods using forced labor, similar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) passed by the US Congress in 2021 that imposed limits on goods produced using forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. A government official who wished to remain anonymous said yesterday that as the US customs law explicitly prohibits the importation of goods made using forced labor, in 2021 it passed the specialized UFLPA to limit the importation of cotton and other goods from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region. Taiwan does not have the legal basis to prohibit the importation of goods