Smuggled animal vaccines disguised as sorghum, the viruses or bacteria they contain remain to be confirmed
Smuggled animal vaccines seized! Today (the 24th), the Kinmen Aviation Police Squad made a discovery. A member of the public sent 18 boxes (210 bottles in total) of Kinmen Kaoliang liquor to Taiwan by air freight, and when one of the boxes was damaged, a liquid with no smell of alcohol leaked out, so it was held back and the Kinmen quarantine station staff of the Kaohsiung branch of the Bureau of Animal and Plant Health Inspection and Quarantine were notified to assist in the investigation. Later, after preliminary questioning by the Kinmen Mobile Investigation Team of the Central Region Branch of the Coast Guard Administration, the person claimed that the liquid in the liquor bottles was duck vaccine smuggled from the mainland, and the specific virus or bacteria still had to be tested.
This batch of vaccines is huge in scale and could be made into 300,000 doses of vaccine; if it had cleared customs successfully, it could have caused a huge disaster. On that day, the investigation team transferred the person to the Kinmen District Prosecutors Office for investigation, and the relevant specimens had already been sampled by the Kinmen quarantine station, with a dedicated person sent to the Animal Drug Testing Branch of the Animal Health Research Institute for identification.
The Bureau of Animal and Plant Health Inspection and Quarantine explained that Taiwan completely bans the use of avian influenza vaccines, but poultry farms still secretly inject vaccines of unknown origin. What is allowed for use is Newcastle disease vaccine for poultry (this is not a flu vaccine). If the price is too low, it may be illegal, and operators are asked to be alert and not to buy and inject it. The bureau called on people not to smuggle or use illegal animal vaccines, because without testing, the quality is not guaranteed; not only can they fail to effectively prevent disease, they may even spread the epidemic, and operators are urged not to defy the law.
According to the Regulations on the Management of Animal Drugs, animal drugs imported without approval are prohibited drugs. Those who manufacture or import prohibited animal drugs shall be sentenced to fixed-term imprisonment of not less than 1 year and not more than 7 years, and shall also be fined not more than NT$4.5 million; in addition, those who split, sell, transport, or display or store prohibited animal drugs with intent to sell shall be sentenced to fixed-term imprisonment of not less than 6 months and not more than 5 years, and may also be fined not more than NT$5 million.