Businesses caught supplying meat products falsely labeled as “Taiwan pork” could face fines of up to NT$4 million (US$140,228), effective Friday, the Council of Agriculture said.
Council of Agriculture Minister Chen Chi-chung (陳吉仲) on Saturday said that when a meat product is labeled “Taiwan pork,” it should mean that its main raw materials are sourced locally.
Businesses, including supermarkets, restaurants and food vendors, caught using false or misleading labeling could be fined NT$40,000 to NT$4 million, based on the Act Governing Food Safety and Sanitation (食品安全衛生管理法), he said.
His comments came after the Legislative Yuan on Thursday voted to approve a slew of administrative directives related to a government decision to lift restrictions on imports of pork containing traces of ractopamine and US beef from cattle older than 30 months.
Authorities are reviewing the more than 10,000 local businesses that have applied for the “Taiwan pork” logo to prove that their main raw materials are truly domestically sourced, Chen said.
The logo is a new branding initiative launched on Dec. 1 by the council, and is designed to help customers distinguish whether shops and restaurants are using predominantly local or imported pork.
Meanwhile, data on the volume of domestic and imported pork on the Taiwanese market would be posted daily on the Web sites of the council and the Ministry of Health and Welfare from next year, Chen added.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
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Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching