Instances of illegally bringing pork products into Taiwan have dropped by 80 percent since 2019, the Central Emergency Operations Center said yesterday, although the risk remains high for products infected with African swine fever entering Taiwan via China and Southeast Asia.
The risk increases during peak travel and mailing periods such as the Mid-Autumn Festival, it said, with many contraventions involving moon cakes containing pork.
The center since 2018 has continuously tested pork products that illegally enter Taiwan’s borders, testing a total of 9,076 samples as of Aug. 31 and identifying 949 positive cases originating from China, Vietnam, Thailand, Malaysia and other neighboring nations.
Photo: CNA
That is a 10.46 percent positivity rate, with 806 cases from China accounting for 84.9 percent of the total, it said.
Beginning in May 2022, the center began to impose fines on mailed parcels containing unlicensed pork products of NT$200,000 (US$6,548) for a first offense and NT$1 million for each subsequent offense.
In the year up to last month, a total of 14 parcels were found to contravene the regulations, it said, a marked decrease on previous years.
Since April 2023, enforcement measures have been implemented at international airports and seaports under a customs clearance system that sorts passengers incoming from nations with higher risk of African swine fever, using the same fine structure.
The number of fines issued per 10,000 passengers has dropped from an average of 3.77 cases before the implementation of the measures to 0.79 cases, a nearly 80 percent reduction compared with the same period in 2019, the center said.
However, the Bureau of Animal and Plant Health Inspection and Quarantine has continued to find traces of African swine fever nucleic acid in agricultural products carried illegally by incoming travelers, and in express parcels and international packages, it said.
The center convened a meeting with ministries to review border control and domestic measures to prevent African swine fever infections ahead of the Mid-Autumn Festival, it added.
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