The Council of Agriculture, the Department of Health and the Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) announced after a meeting held on February 7th that their joint efforts have resulted in the investigation of illegal selling of meat of dead pigs.

During the meeting, the three agencies also agreed on stricter measures to further crack down on violations. Those measures include random road inspections, tighter control of applications for dead pig transportation and treatment crackdown on illegal butchering, inspection of the source of downstream pork, promoting public awareness, formulation of a planned production and marketing system, establishment of a production record system, etc., to prevent illegal marketing and maintain hygienic standards for the domestic pork market. The agencies also called upon pig breeders to practice self-discipline, and to cooperate closely with the government.

The COA also announced that illegal selling of dead pig meat was discovered in the Yuanlin and Pingtung areas after months of continuous monitoring and surveillance by the police and the EPA of delivery vehicles for dead pigs and electronic tracking of suspicious vehicles.

Meanwhile, local health authorities also cooperated fully with the investigation and prosecution of enterprises engaged in the illegal selling of dead pig meat. Even though media reports on these cases had severe impact, to the park market in the future, the concerned government agencies will continued enforcing the following measures to prevent further illegal butchering and selling.

EPA
1. Investigate and penalize pig farms caught by dumping dead pig body.
2. Implement GPS tracking of legal delivery vehicles of legal, and work with local investigation teams to strengthen inspection. Enforce full-scale road interception of illegal vehicle deliveries.
3. Request the EPA, the central waste management authority to consider the dead pig as waste for treatment in accordance with the Waste Disposal Act.

MOH
1. Enforce investigation and prosecution of dead pigs’ meat sold on the market as well as processing plants selling illegal dead pig meat.
2. Analyze the flow and mode of selling dead pig meat, and devote great efforts to the investigation of the source of the downstream pork suppliers, pork manufacturing plants, pork processing plants, and group meals contractors.

COA
1. Monitor the list of self-regulated pig farms from each county and city, and have these farms inspected at least once a year.
2. Assist each of the contracted pig farms in filling in triple-invoices for waste materials treatment in order to prevent illegal selling. In the future, the council will also work with the EPA to bring the treatment of dead pig body into a centralized industrial waste management system body.
3. Install monitoring systems at each dead livestock body treatment plant.
4. Constantly supervise each county and city in implementing their educational promotion and investigation and prosecution tasks, and call upon pig breeders to exercise self-discipline in order to achieve sustainable development of the industry.
5. Establish planned production and marketing systems of pigs in order to have a clear picture of the production and marketing of pigs, which later will be used as the basis for loss compensations.
6. Speed up the establishment of a production record system so as to effectively ensure the hygiene and safety of pigs’ meat from farms to dinning tables.

The Council of Agriculture stressed that to prevent illegal selling of dead pig meat, it has been working with the EPA, the Ministry of Health, the National Police Administration of the Ministry of Interior and with city and county administrations for years to crack down on violations. The Prosecutor’s Office for the Taiwan High Court in May of 2005, established the People's Livelihood Crime Taskforce focused on the illegal selling of dead pig meat, and instructed the prosecutor’s office to also make it the focus of their investigation. In 2006, a total of 13 cases of illegal selling of dead pig meat were found (8 cases in Yuanlin county, 3 cases in Tainan County, 1 case in each Hsinchu and Pintung County).There has been a reduction of 3 cases compared with the 16 cases in 2005 (10 cases in Yuanlin County, 2 cases in Tainan County, 2 cases in Pintung County, and 1 case in each Kaohsiung and Chiayi County).

According to the Council of Agriculture there has been a total of 62 cases of illegal selling of dead pig meat from 2001 to today. Among them, 16 are still under investigation by prosecutors, 10 have been spared prosecution, and 23 cases have been indicted. The crime carries a minimum jail sentence of 2 months, and a maximum of 8 years and 6 months. There are now 13 cases still pending in court. From January to December 2006, data from 6 dead livestock treatment plants showed that a total of 117,041 tons of dead livestock body were treated, an increase of 32,772 tons (increase of about 38.9%) in comparison with the same period last year. The statistics revealed that the joint efforts of the Council of Agriculture with relevant authorities in preventing the illegal selling of dead pig meat by issuing triple-invoice for the dead pigs, strict enforcement of investigations and the implementation of GPS surveillance systems as well as the implementation of the pig insurgence system have been effective.

The Council of Agriculture express gratitude for the hard work of the Prosecutors’ Offices, police departments and the counties and cities governments. The council will make use of the media to continue to educate consumers on how to discern and purchase good pork. The council will also analyze the ways dead pig meat is sold, and study if any legal provisions and administration measures should be strengthened. It is hoped that by offering NT$2 million dollars as award to encourage the general public to report illegal selling cases. The toll-free report hotline is: 0800–039-131。

The Council of Agriculture would like to stress that the domestic pig breeding industry has already marched into the stage of global competition after Taiwan’s accession into WTO and liberalizing domestic pork market. Therefore, pig producers should especially practice self-discipline, besides cutting down their production coat. They should also pay special attention to product hygiene and safety in order to boost the international competitiveness of the products.