The Ministry of Agriculture is launching a series of measures to boost the demand for Taiwan-
produced fresh milk to minimize the impact of the removal of tariffs on dairy products imported from New Zealand from 2025.
The zero-tariff policy for dairy products imported from New Zealand is part of an economic cooperation agreement between Taiwan and New Zealand, called ANZTEC, which was signed on July 10, 2013.
Photo: Chu Pei-hsiung, Taipei Times
At a joint meeting of four legislative committees yesterday, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Lee De-wei (李德維) asked Acting Minister of Agriculture Chen Junne-jih (陳駿季) how the policy would affect the domestic fresh milk market.
“We have been holding talks with dairy farming industry representatives in the past year... The most important thing is to increase the demand for Taiwan-produced milk and distinguish it from milk imported from other countries,” Chen said.
The agricultural industry is redesigning the label for Taiwan-produced fresh milk and has developed the technology to identify any mixture of domestically produced milk and imported milk, he said.
Lee said the ministry should consider not calling imported liquid milk “fresh milk” to distinguish it from locally produced milk.
Chen said that the quality of Taiwan-produced fresh milk, as well as its low-carbon emission production process, should be recognized and affirmed by domestic consumers, which is a better way to distinguish between these two types of milk.
Chen told a meeting of the Economics Committee on Wednesday last week that the ministry is seeking approval from the Executive Yuan for a proposal to establish a four-year dairy farming industry development fund to mitigate the impact that the new policy might have on the domestic dairy farming industry.
The funding would be used to upgrade the local dairy farming industry, create demand for domestically produced dairy products and facilitate sales of these products, he said.
“We need to review the size of dairy cattle. Of the roughly 125,000 dairy cows in the country, 12,000 sick and weak ones are to be retired,” he said.
“We will seek to reduce the costs that dairy farmers spend to buy forage grass and incorporate the weather forecast system into the grass-drying process,” he said.
“We will also monitor the quality of domestically produced milk, coordinate the pricing scheme between ranches and dairy plants, reduce carbon emissions during the production process and facilitate the sales of domestically produced milk,” he added.
To boost demand for Taiwan-made dairy products, the government would increase the supply of fresh milk to school-age children and elderly people in farming and fishing villages, Chen said.
There would also be a traceability system for Taiwan-made dairy products, it said.
Some dairy farmers have suggested that the ministry intervene and help lower shelf placement fees for domestically produced dairy products in supermarkets or larger retail chains, as the fees generally account for 30 to 50 percent of retail prices.
“Pricing strategies for dairy products are determined based on various contracts between dairy plants and supermarkets, and it would be difficult for the government to intervene,” Chen said.
An essay competition jointly organized by a local writing society and a publisher affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) might have contravened the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例), the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said on Thursday. “In this case, the partner organization is clearly an agency under the CCP’s Fujian Provincial Committee,” MAC Deputy Minister and spokesperson Liang Wen-chieh (梁文傑) said at a news briefing in Taipei. “It also involves bringing Taiwanese students to China with all-expenses-paid arrangements to attend award ceremonies and camps,” Liang said. Those two “characteristics” are typically sufficient
A magnitude 5.9 earthquake that struck about 33km off the coast of Hualien City was the "main shock" in a series of quakes in the area, with aftershocks expected over the next three days, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Prior to the magnitude 5.9 quake shaking most of Taiwan at 6:53pm yesterday, six other earthquakes stronger than a magnitude of 4, starting with a magnitude 5.5 quake at 6:09pm, occurred in the area. CWA Seismological Center Director Wu Chien-fu (吳健富) confirmed that the quakes were all part of the same series and that the magnitude 5.5 temblor was
The brilliant blue waters, thick foliage and bucolic atmosphere on this seemingly idyllic archipelago deep in the Pacific Ocean belie the key role it now plays in a titanic geopolitical struggle. Palau is again on the front line as China, and the US and its allies prepare their forces in an intensifying contest for control over the Asia-Pacific region. The democratic nation of just 17,000 people hosts US-controlled airstrips and soon-to-be-completed radar installations that the US military describes as “critical” to monitoring vast swathes of water and airspace. It is also a key piece of the second island chain, a string of
The Central Weather Administration has issued a heat alert for southeastern Taiwan, warning of temperatures as high as 36°C today, while alerting some coastal areas of strong winds later in the day. Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門) and Pingtung County’s Neipu Township (內埔) are under an orange heat alert, which warns of temperatures as high as 36°C for three consecutive days, the CWA said, citing southwest winds. The heat would also extend to Tainan’s Nansi (楠西) and Yujing (玉井) districts, as well as Pingtung’s Gaoshu (高樹), Yanpu (鹽埔) and Majia (瑪家) townships, it said, forecasting highs of up to 36°C in those areas