All major agricultural products in Taiwan, including rice, chicken and pork, as well as fish and other aquaculture products, are one day to be sold with carbon footprint details on the label, Council of Agriculture Minister Chen Chi-chung (陳吉仲) said.
Chen made the remarks in an interview with the Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times) on Wednesday, during which he talked about carbon footprint labeling, rural power supply and other issues.
Consumers are increasingly conscious of the carbon footprint of the food products that they buy, but few products in Taiwan include such details on the packaging, Chen said.
Photo: Liu Hsin-de, Taipei Times
“Labels are not yet required to include such information, but someday it will be needed if we want to have a society with net-zero emissions,” he said. “There are already formulas to follow, such as how much carbon dioxide is emitted per kilogram of meat produced and how much is emitted during transportation.”
Having labels that show consumers the carbon footprint of foods would help them better understand that imported foods have a hidden cost that locally produced foods do not have, he said.
Taiwan relies heavily on imports of various grains, such as soybeans and corn, so to reduce the carbon footprint of these products, more local land would need to be allotted to growing them, he said.
“We aim to grow locally at least 10 percent of the soybeans we consume, and plan to allot 30,000 hectares apiece for corn and sorghum,” he said. “In the future, we hope to grow locally the sorghum used by Kinmen’s sorghum liquor industry.”
The council has also prioritized the development of green energy sources, he said.
For example, the council is focusing on the development of circular agriculture, which converts agricultural waste into biogas for the generation of electricity, Chen said.
“Rural farmers could be self-reliant as far as meeting their electricity needs, and could generate extra income by selling surplus electricity back to the grid,” he said.
President Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) plan to transition Taiwan to renewable sources of energy envisions farmers producing 12 gigawatts of green energy, he said.
The council is this year to set up 10 sites, including in Changhua and Chiayi counties, that demonstrate circular agriculture.
“In Belgium, a town has already done this. The community of 30,000 people generates all of its power needs through agriculturally produced biogas,” he said. “The town’s power plant, which uses food and animal waste to generate biogas, is highly automated and needs only three people to operate it.”
Through biogas, solar panels installed on the roofs of farmhouses and chicken coops, and other sources of green energy, all farming communities in Taiwan could generate all of their own power, he said.
Another goals is to decentralize the power grid, he added.
In related news, Chen on Saturday announced a planned law that would regulate industry standards so that businesses can tap into the pet care market.
The draft bill would authorize the creation of a system of certificates for animal care products, such as food, healthcare and insurance products, under the auspices of animal protection authorities, he said.
Taiwanese keep more than 2.5 million cats and dogs as pets, with the figure increasing by about 10 percent annually, Chen said.
The council holds a monthly briefing on the bill’s progress, he said, adding that Premier Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌) is supporting the project.
The bill would require staffing at animal welfare authorities to increase, he said.
The council estimates that businesses catering to pets generate NT$60 billion (US$2.12 billion) per year, which the bill would promote further, Chen said.
Additional reporting by Yang Chin-cheng
‘DENIAL DEFENSE’: The US would increase its military presence with uncrewed ships, and submarines, while boosting defense in the Indo-Pacific, a Pete Hegseth memo said The US is reorienting its military strategy to focus primarily on deterring a potential Chinese invasion of Taiwan, a memo signed by US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth showed. The memo also called on Taiwan to increase its defense spending. The document, known as the “Interim National Defense Strategic Guidance,” was distributed this month and detailed the national defense plans of US President Donald Trump’s administration, an article in the Washington Post said on Saturday. It outlines how the US can prepare for a potential war with China and defend itself from threats in the “near abroad,” including Greenland and the Panama
The High Prosecutors’ Office yesterday withdrew an appeal against the acquittal of a former bank manager 22 years after his death, marking Taiwan’s first instance of prosecutors rendering posthumous justice to a wrongfully convicted defendant. Chu Ching-en (諸慶恩) — formerly a manager at the Taipei branch of BNP Paribas — was in 1999 accused by Weng Mao-chung (翁茂鍾), then-president of Chia Her Industrial Co, of forging a request for a fixed deposit of US$10 million by I-Hwa Industrial Co, a subsidiary of Chia Her, which was used as collateral. Chu was ruled not guilty in the first trial, but was found guilty
DEADLOCK: As the commission is unable to forum a quorum to review license renewal applications, the channel operators are not at fault and can air past their license date The National Communications Commission (NCC) yesterday said that the Public Television Service (PTS) and 36 other television and radio broadcasters could continue airing, despite the commission’s inability to meet a quorum to review their license renewal applications. The licenses of PTS and the other channels are set to expire between this month and June. The National Communications Commission Organization Act (國家通訊傳播委員會組織法) stipulates that the commission must meet the mandated quorum of four to hold a valid meeting. The seven-member commission currently has only three commissioners. “We have informed the channel operators of the progress we have made in reviewing their license renewal applications, and
A wild live dugong was found in Taiwan for the first time in 88 years, after it was accidentally caught by a fisher’s net on Tuesday in Yilan County’s Fenniaolin (粉鳥林). This is the first sighting of the species in Taiwan since 1937, having already been considered “extinct” in the country and considered as “vulnerable” by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. A fisher surnamed Chen (陳) went to Fenniaolin to collect the fish in his netting, but instead caught a 3m long, 500kg dugong. The fisher released the animal back into the wild, not realizing it was an endangered species at
RSS