The Taichung District Court yesterday approved a request by prosecutors to detain a father and son who operated a pig farm where an outbreak of African swine fever is believed to have originated.
The Taichung District Prosecutors’ Office said in a statement that after questioning the farmers a second time, it believed they forged documents, and if not detained and held incommunicado posed a high risk of destroying or further forging evidence, as well as colluding with accomplices or witnesses.
The farmers, surnamed Chen (陳), are suspected of altering the numbers on a triplicate form used for the handover of dead pigs to off-site rendering operations, which make the carcasses safe for processing into pork products.
Photo: CNA
Numbers on the form the farmers kept were different from the documents given to the rendering operator, prosecutors said in a statement on Thursday last week.
The discrepancy makes it difficult to determine whether all of the dead pigs from the farm were handled by the rendering operator or if some were illegally sold or disposed of separately, they said.
Prosecutors said they would continue to collaborate closely with disease control units and police in investigating the incident.
The outbreak, which was announced publicly on Oct. 22, was confirmed to have originated from the farm in Taichung’s Wuci District (梧棲) on Oct. 25. It led to a 15-day ban on the slaughter and transport of pigs.
The African Swine Fever Forward Command Center on Monday said the breakout was likely caused by feeding pigs food waste that had not been properly sterilized.
The outbreak appears to be contained, it added.
The center is by noon today to determine whether the transport and slaughter ban would be lifted as scheduled on Friday, Premier Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰) said yesterday.
A ban on feeding pigs kitchen waste would remain in place until conditions proposed by the Ministry of Agriculture are met, Cho added.
The conditions include joint inspections by the ministry and the Ministry of Environment, as well as safety checks on cooking equipment and pigs at all 434 hog farms engaged in kitchen waste feeding, the agriculture ministry said.
Cooking equipment must be subject to real-time monitoring, rather than simply allowing operators to upload data periodically, as was done in the past, while regulations on kitchen waste management would be updated, it said.
If the transportation and slaughtering ban is lifted, the Executive Yuan would institute measures to stabilize the primary production chain, pork prices and the supply of meat, Cho said.
Efforts would be reviewed weekly to ensure conditions return to normal within the next month, he said.
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