Travelers from Nepal are no longer permitted to bring pork or pork products into Taiwan, after the Southeast Asian nation on Wednesday reported its first case of African swine fever to the World Organisation for Animal Health, Council of Agriculture Minister Chen Chi-chung (陳吉仲) said yesterday.
Contravening the ban, which was to start yesterday, would result in a NT$200,000 (US$6,718) fine for first-time offenders and a NT$1 million fine for repeat offenders, Chen said, adding that arrivals who are unable to pay the fines would be refused entry.
As the council tightens controls ahead of the Dragon Boat Festival next month, it said that repeat offenders or willful recipients of pork products shipped from areas affected by African swine fever are to face fines of at least NT$200,000.
Photo: Reuters
Previously, recipients of banned pork products would be questioned by the council and required to report the shipment or risk a fine.
In anticipation of an expected rise in inbound shipments of pork products ahead of the festival on June 3, the Bureau of Animal and Plant Health Inspection and Quarantine is imposing stricter penalties on repeat offenders, starting from today.
Those caught receiving packages containing banned pork products multiple times would be subject to a fine of NT$200,000 to NT$1 million, as per Article 43 of the Statute for Prevention and Control of Infectious Animal Diseases (動物傳染病防治條例), the bureau said.
The changes are intended to encourage recipients to contact senders to tell them to refrain from shipping similar products to Taiwan, it said.
Those found to have knowingly imported illegal products after an interview with the council would also be fined, even if they are a first-time offender, it added.
Inspections have been heightened and farmers banned from feeding hogs food waste after August last year, when travelers from affected countries brought contaminated pork to Taiwan.
African swine fever poses a major threat to the pork industry, which accounts for more than 90 percent of domestic pork consumption and is worth about NT$7.2 billion, council data showed.
All products containing pork from countries affected by African swine fever are banned, including processed foods, pet food and animal feed.
UN Food and Agriculture Organization data showed that the following Asian countries have detected the disease since 2018: Bhutan, Cambodia, China (including Hong Kong), East Timor, India, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Mongolia, Myanmar, Nepal, North Korea, Papua New Guinea, the Philippines, South Korea, Thailand and Vietnam.
From September last year to last month, customs officials had intercepted 569 packages containing illegal pork products totaling 542.57kg, the bureau said.
Most were from China and Hong Kong, followed by Thailand, Vietnam and the Philippines.
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
REVENGE TRAVEL: A surge in ticket prices should ease this year, but inflation would likely keep tickets at a higher price than before the pandemic Scoot is to offer six additional flights between Singapore and Northeast Asia, with all routes transiting Taipei from April 1, as the budget airline continues to resume operations that were paused during the COVID-19 pandemic, a Scoot official said on Thursday. Vice president of sales Lee Yong Sin (李榮新) said at a gathering with reporters in Taipei that the number of flights from Singapore to Japan and South Korea with a stop in Taiwan would increase from 15 to 21 each week. That change means the number of the Singapore-Taiwan-Tokyo flights per week would increase from seven to 12, while Singapore-Taiwan-Seoul
POOR PREPARATION: Cultures can form on food that is out of refrigeration for too long and cooking does not reliably neutralize their toxins, an epidemiologist said Medical professionals yesterday said that suspected food poisoning deaths revolving around a restaurant at Far Eastern Department Store Xinyi A13 Store in Taipei could have been caused by one of several types of bacterium. Ho Mei-shang (何美鄉), an epidemiologist at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Biomedical Sciences, wrote on Facebook that the death of a 39-year-old customer of the restaurant suggests the toxin involved was either “highly potent or present in massive large quantities.” People who ate at the restaurant showed symptoms within hours of consuming the food, suggesting that the poisoning resulted from contamination by a toxin and not infection of the
BAD NEIGHBORS: China took fourth place among countries spreading disinformation, with Hong Kong being used as a hub to spread propaganda, a V-Dem study found Taiwan has been rated as the country most affected by disinformation for the 11th consecutive year in a study by the global research project Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem). The nation continues to be a target of disinformation originating from China, and Hong Kong is increasingly being used as a base from which to disseminate that disinformation, the report said. After Taiwan, Latvia and Palestine ranked second and third respectively, while Nicaragua, North Korea, Venezuela and China, in that order, were the countries that spread the most disinformation, the report said. Each country listed in the report was given a score,