Government officials yesterday dismissed an Agence France-Presse report that said Taiwan had lifted a ban on Paraguayan beef imports.
The ban was imposed late last year because of the discovery of foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) in that country.
The story cited Paraguayan Foreign Minister Jose Moreno Ruffinelli as saying the ban had been lifted.
"That story is not correct," said Tsao Sung-mao (
Ministry spokeswoman Catherine Chang (
Imports of Paraguayan beef have been banned since Nov. 4 due to reports that two cases of the disease were found in cattle on a ranch near the border with Brazil, according to an official at the Council of Agriculture.
"We have recently sent several livestock experts to Paraguay to investigate the situation," said Chou Hsiao-mei (周曉梅), a section chief at the council's Bureau of Animal and Plant Health Inspection and Quarantine. "But we are still concerned about the epidemic."
Paraguay began exporting beef to Taiwan in 2000 and has shipped around 20 tonnes of beef thus far, Chou said.
An outbreak of FMD in Taiwan in 1997 caused heavy losses for the pork industry, with more than half of the nation's estimated 7 million pigs slaughtered.
After instituting a vaccination program for livestock, there has not been a single case of the disease being found in the country since February 2001, Chou said.
With no FMD cases having been reported in two years, Taiwan plans to apply as an "FMD-free country with vaccination status" to the Office International des Epizooties, an international animal health organization based in Paris, and is expected to resume pork exports in two years, she added.
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