Brian Hioeby Brian Hioe
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Photo Credit: Makoto Lin/Office of the President/Flickr/CC BY 2.0
THE AFRICAN SWINE FEVER(ASF) has entered Taiwan, with cases confirmed after inspections of dead pigs at a farm in Taichung. The Taiwanese government has stated that it will report the cases to the World Organization for Animal Health, as well as trading partners. The Taiwanese government has, likewise, stated that it is willing to provide information to China, seeking to take the high moral ground when China has sometimes been criticized as refusing to share information with Taiwan or other countries over disease outbreaks.
Disinfections of farm and transportation equipment have been carried out nationwide. To this extent, the nation’s more than 5,000 farms, including 4,165 pig farms, have been inspected. A five-day ban on slaughtering pigs was imposed from October 22nd, along with a ban on feeding pigs food waste for fifteen days due to the incubation period of ASF, while pigs that were already transported for slaughter will be maintained on-site. Inspections before and after slaughter will be stepped up.
Deputy Minister of Agriculture Tu Wen-jane will direct the on-site task force, while former Minister of Health and Welfare Chen Shih-chung will also serve on the response team. Chen is credited with leading Taiwan through the COVID-19 pandemic. The Lai administration is likely aiming to convey the degree of seriousness with which it regards the cases by bringing Chen, who is currently a Minister without Portfolio under the Executive Yuan, onto the response team.
In the wake of the outbreak, Taiwan will need to have at least three months without any cases of ASF to regain ASF-free status. Some have questioned whether several decades of effort to rid Taiwan of ASF have been for naught. For now, the government stresses that the outbreak has been contained.
It may be unsurprising that a round of political finger-pointing has also ensued, with the pan-Blue camp criticized for reducing the budget for border inspections by 20 million NT. How ASF ended up in a farm in Taichung is still unknown, but border inspections for meat products entering Taiwan are a regular feature of customs in Taiwan, so as to prevent the spread of ASF. The allegation, then, is that budget cuts pushed for by the pan-Blue camp led to the outbreak.
TPP party chair Huang Kuo-chang has been singled out in particular for the deletion of the budgetary item. Huang has denied this, stating that the funds for epidemic prevention were not cut, and that cutting the budget for border inspections would not lead to the outbreak. Huang criticized a previous incident in which the dye pigment Sudan Red was found to be used in chili powder as a coloring agent, suggesting that this was a failure of Kaohsiung municipal authorities. The suggestion by Huang seemed to be that cutting the budget was to punish Kaohsiung mayoral officials in this way.
Taichung mayor Lu Shiow-yen also now faces a major scandal, seeing as the outbreak originated in Taichung. Veterinary inspectors were accused of being unlicensed, and the Taichung city government was accused of being slow to act over the potential outbreak. The Taichung city government was further criticized with the perception that it has sought to shift blame and Lu has been seen as failing to be present in meetings over the issue.
This is not the only issue in which the pan-Blue camp has been criticized for the impact of the budget cuts it pushed for earlier this year, using its control of the legislature, which were the largest in Taiwanese history. For one, the KMT continues to seek to roll back reforms to the pension system passed by the Tsai administration, ending a preferential savings rate of 18% for public servants, teachers, members of the military, and members of the police. Though such lucrative pensions have been used during the authoritarian period as a means of maintaining the political support of influential groups such as public servants, teachers, military, and police, in post-authoritarian times, this has threatened to bankrupt the pension system.
The KMT would be seeking to benefit political groups that historically supported it and, in this way, ensure their loyalty in elections. However, the Lai administration has pointed to the dangers for the overall pension system and suggested that they could lead to a fiscal crisis. Moreover, the changes have been criticized as burdening younger generations–including younger civil servants–with having to pay for the pensions of civil servants who enjoyed sinecure positions when they will not have pensions for themselves when older. Indeed, there have been an increasing number of political controversies that centered on the issue of intergenerational justice at a time that Taiwan has become a Super-Aged society, even as young people continue to experience low wages and long working hours, to the degree that they are unable to afford homes or start families.