Lovers of braised pork rice may consider getting out of bed early today, as the winner of last year's national braised pork contest is handing out free pork rice to its first 200 customers.
The two-day free pork rice promotion at Long-en Braised Pork (龍恩) in Taipei County's Jhonghe City (中和) began yesterday as part of the Council of Agriculture's efforts to calm public concerns about the safety of consuming pork in the face of a global swine flu outbreak.
“Consumers should use action to support domestic pork,” said Hsu Tien-lai (??, director of the council's Department of Animal Industry.
“Neither the US Centers for Disease Control nor the WHO has found any direct links between swine flu and the hog industry,” Hsu said.
“People will not be infected by eating pork,” he said.
To observe the strictest precautions, Hsu said that Taiwanese pig farmers had been asked to refrain from visiting pig farms in regions that have been affected by the swine flu outbreak.
Farm owners are required to report signs of Influenza A(H1N1) — as the WHO now calls the new virus strain — infection in their pig stock, Hsu said.
Bowls of soy sauce braised pork were handed out to customers on a first-come, first-served basis yesterday, said Long-en's store manager surnamed Chen, adding that the 200 free servings were distributed in about 1.5 hours.
Asked if the swine flu scare had affected sales, Chen said media reports had affected business to a degree.
“However, we use Certified Agricultural Standards pork and fully cook the meat, so most of our customers know that our pork is safe to eat,” he said.
Foreign tourists who purchase a seven-day Taiwan Pass are to get a second one free of charge as part of a government bid to boost tourism, the Tourism Administration said yesterday. A pair of Taiwan Passes is priced at NT$5,000 (US$156.44), an agency staff member said, adding that the passes can be used separately. The pass can be used in many of Taiwan’s major cities and to travel to several tourist resorts. It expires seven days after it is first used. The pass is a three-in-one package covering the high-speed rail system, mass rapid transport (MRT) services and the Taiwan Tourist Shuttle services,
Drinking a lot of water or milk would not help a person who has ingested terbufos, a toxic chemical that has been identified as the likely cause of three deaths, a health expert said yesterday. An 83-year-old woman surnamed Tseng (曾) and two others died this week after eating millet dumplings with snails that Tseng had made. Tseng died on Tuesday and others ate the leftovers when they went to her home to mourn her death that evening. Twelve people became ill after eating the dumplings following Tseng’s death. Their symptoms included vomiting and convulsions. Six were hospitalized, with two of them
DIVA-READY: The city’s deadline for the repairs is one day before pop star Jody Chiang is to perform at the Taipei Dome for the city’s Double Ten National Day celebrations The Taipei City Government has asked Farglory Group (遠雄集團) to repair serious water leaks in the Taipei Dome before Friday next week, Taipei Mayor Chiang Wan-an (蔣萬安) said yesterday, following complaints that many areas at the stadium were leaking during two baseball games over the weekend. The dome on Saturday and Sunday hosted two games in tribute to CTBC Brothers’ star Chou Szu-chi (周思齊) ahead of his retirement from the CPBL. The games each attracted about 40,000 people, filling the stadium to capacity. However, amid heavy rain, many people reported water leaking on some seats, at the entrance and exit areas, and the
BIG collection: The herbarium holds more than 560,000 specimens, from the Japanese colonial period to the present, including the Wulai azalea, which is now extinct in the wild The largest collection of plant specimens in Taiwan, the Taipei Botanical Garden’s herbarium, is celebrating its 100th anniversary with an exhibition that opened on Friday. The herbarium provides critical historical documents for botanists and is the first of its kind in Taiwan, Taiwan Forestry Research Institute director Tseng Yen-hsueh (曾彥學) said. It is housed in a two-story red brick building, which opened during 1924. At the time, it stored 30,000 plant specimens from almost 6,000 species, including Taiwanese plant samples collected by Tomitaro Makino, the “father of Japanese botany,” Tseng said. The herbarium collection has grown in the century since its