The ban on poultry imports from Japan has remained in force since January last year, a Council of Agriculture official in charge of animal quarantine and inspection affairs said yesterday.
The official made the remarks after the Japanese government announced over the weekend that bird flu has been detected in chickens at a farm in northeastern Japan and that restrictions have been imposed on shipments of poultry and eggs from the area.
"We have enforced a ban on Japanese poultry imports since H5N1 bird flu infections were confirmed in that country in January 2004," the official said, adding that the ban has not once been lifted since that time.
Amid reports of new bird flu infections in Japan, the council will heighten its alert and step up inspection and quarantine measures to avert any avian flu-infected poultry from entering the country, the official said.
The Japanese government said Sunday that more than 800 chickens at a farm in Mitsukaido City in Ibaraki Prefecture, located just northeast of Tokyo, have died since April, and recent tests on some found they were infected with the H5N2 strain of bird flu.
H5N2 is regarded as less dangerous strain of the bird flu virus compared to the H5N1 strain, which has led to the death and slaughter of tens of millions of birds across Asia since late 2003. The H5N1 strain has also crossed over to humans, killing 38 people in Vietnam, 12 in Thailand and four in Cambodia over the past couple of years.
A magnitude 4.9 earthquake struck off Tainan at 11:47am today, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. The hypocenter was 32.3km northeast of Tainan City Hall at a depth of 7.3km, CWA data showed. The intensity of the quake, which gauges the actual effect of a seismic event, measured 4 in Tainan and Chiayi County on Taiwan's seven-tier intensity scale, the data showed. The quake had an intensity of 3 in Chiayi City and County, and Yunlin County, while it was measured as 2 in Kaohsiung, Nantou County, Changhua County, Taitung County and offshore Penghu County, the data showed. There were no immediate reports of
Weather conditions across Taiwan are expected to remain stable today, but cloudy to rainy skies are expected from tomorrow onward due to increasing moisture in the atmosphere, according to the Central Weather Administration (CWA). Daytime highs today are expected to hit 25-27°C in western Taiwan and 22-24°C in the eastern counties of Yilan, Hualien, and Taitung, data on the CWA website indicated. After sunset, temperatures could drop to 16-17°C in most parts of Taiwan. For tomorrow, precipitation is likely in northern Taiwan as a cloud system moves in from China. Daytime temperatures are expected to hover around 25°C, the CWA said. Starting Monday, areas
A Taiwanese software developer has created a generative artificial intelligence (AI) model to help people use AI without exposing sensitive data, project head Huang Chung-hsiao (黃崇校) said yesterday. Huang, a 55-year-old coder leading a US-based team, said that concerns over data privacy and security in popular generative AIs such as ChatGPT and DeepSeek motivated him to develop a personal AI assistant named “Mei.” One of the biggest security flaws with cloud-based algorithms is that users are required to hand over personal information to access the service, giving developers the opportunity to mine user data, he said. For this reason, many government agencies and
Taiwan has recorded its first fatal case of Coxsackie B5 enterovirus in 10 years after a one-year-old boy from southern Taiwan died from complications early last month, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said yesterday. CDC spokesman Lo Yi-chun (羅一鈞) told a news conference that the child initially developed a fever and respiratory symptoms before experiencing seizures and loss of consciousness. The boy was diagnosed with acute encephalitis and admitted to intensive care, but his condition deteriorated rapidly, and he passed away on the sixth day of illness, Lo said. This also marks Taiwan’s third enterovirus-related death this year and the first severe
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