There are many things to be said about the Taiwanese domestic production of meat. Different categories have different issues.
Taiwan fisheries industry is as dirty as it gets, and there is literally zero moral high ground over other shyte countries like china and japan in this regard. There is something to be said for farmed aquatic and marine life, but that is riddled with issues as well. In my opinion, It makes sense for fresh water aquaculture to be done while integrated into land based farm systems. this is an area i am very much interested in, based on efficiency and environmental impact. That is a big topic. interested in discussing if anyone reading this wishes to, but isn’t related to the president trying to use agriculture to avoid war with china, which is really the point of this thread.
Lamb/goat is more or less a non issue as the market demand is fine with goat over sheep here so international policy isn’t a big deal. All the more reason people should wake up and realize that their purchases absolutely can control the market, not the market(ing) controls the masses. A pathetic copout often used, especially in the western hate big business crowds…this unfortunately shadows those groups’ valid points as they come across as extremists.
Foul, mostly chicken, is a foul industry worldwide. Even certified organic allows for antibiotic shots due to disease risk…we can talk further on that if needed, but that alone should shine like a beacon on how terrible the production of chicken is. In regards to both quality/health and as to production standards and morals. Note, organic certification does not take into account moral culture and treatment of animals. And in that situation, lack of empathy directly correlates to the, often mandatory, use of medications being used in organic production due to production methods employed. For people from places like the USA and canada, the government saying you cant raise over a certain number of birds on residential land has more to do with disease control rather than the often bullshit excuse of noise and smell they spew to get communities on board without having to expend any energy to learn about the real situation. Fail. Think on that point for a moment and just how ironic it really is.
Beef. Taiwan has a very tiny industry and just a slightly larger milk industry. Hence why no one is crying wolf on the beef side of this argument.
Land based invertebrate meat taiwan is absolutely well suited for. Taiwan has an amazing mix of old school traditional, quasi-monkey level, rationale mixed perfectly with world class logistics, development couple with ample money and ability to pump global scale production. If anywhere can make bugs as food a thing, it is Taiwan. The culture is even, relatively, easily persuaded. Another topic if people are interested. the taste, production, tech and investment is all there.
Wild meat. In taiwan its hard due to land size and population density. Not sustainable, not worth discussing. But it is a thing. Probably more of a conservation issue than a food safety or political one.
And now back to pork. Probably the dirtiest, most corrupt meat industry in Taiwan. Probably the world. Well, fisheries is pretty dark, but a fairly different can of worms as pork tends to be less involved with drugs, smuggling etc. Terrible nonetheless.
As per @dr_milker question. I need to go through a few hard drives and check for pics i took of medicine shelves in the farm houses. im worried they are on my old pc, which used windows xp and the password login locked me out, I am told windows xp is notorious for this. i kept the computer as there is a LOT of stuff like this i want to keep, but I am not very tech savy so havent been able to get in. Reason for mentioning that is i cannot remember all the different pig medications by name. Either by actual chemical names or by branded english/Chinese names. sorry! So take this with grains of salt as you cant verify whether i am full of shit or not. Same as everything in life, always question its accuracy. But for what its worth, these are my true experiences dealing with pigs.
medicines that stuck out to me, not counting antibiotics and the like as all meat production uses LOADS of them. As an aside, our landlord of my previous business and house has been caught 5 times so far for ractopamine in their feed. Pork farmers are a bit hit or miss on money as sometimes they make bank, other times they go in the red. The variables are the market for selling and the weight at time of sale, and more importantly the feed price. Actually the swine feed producers are friggen bandits and the majority should just be arrested and forgotten about. But anyway, they probably make up a good portion of this lobby against the government’s efforts to free taiwan. The pricks.
A few times we were helping the mayors family in our neighbouring village mix in a sterilization chemical into some kind of shot. Oral forms were tried as well, but foggy on that one. This one stuck out to me as they were experimenting with things and seemed pretty extreme in their willingness to kill pigs trying (meaning willingness to lose money, none of them have any sense of compassion). In the end the pigs, males, were all sent to slaughter for meat. No idea the issues with that, but it was a common thing at the time to try. the normal standard is to take a knife and cut off the balls of younger male pigs. I am sure the official line and training video is far more sensitive than reality. The issue with balls on pigs that the hormones cause the meat to stink, amongst other logistical issues. I have flashbacks to this day to be honest. As pigs aren’t given painkillers, numbing agents etc. just grab, dig, pull and cut. if you havent heard a pig squeal in serious pain , count yourself lucky. Its horrendous and deafening. Now do a farm load of a few hundred in a day with your hired pig ball cutting professional. Psychopathic is the only way to view it. Chemical castration seems logical on paper. No idea how that played out long term on food smell or for food safety. Shortly after is when i became vegetarian. Just couldnt anymore.
Transport. Not everyone cares, i understand the ignorance though dont agree with it. In brief, pigs are hit into an area through the farm. They get packed into a truck. Basically as packed as possible. the best way to get people to understand the situation is to ask them to drive next to a pig truck. Keep next to them and wait for the moment they have to slam the brakes. Be it red light, cars cutting them off. whatever, it wont take long in Taiwan before a rushed stop takes place. Now, try to listen. between the insanely loud screams of pain, listen for cracking sounds. think of snapping a 1 inch thick dry branch under water. Like that but slightly higher pitched. Those are legs breaking in the truck. Legs are the easiest to hear, broken ribs are more common but silent, though organ puncture is common from broken ribs. Sometimes pigs get dragged into slaughter, not herded in, due to inability to walk from such injuries. internal bleeding, paralysis etc is also common. Thats a simple fix, but logistically money trumps empathy everytime and is not in any way, shape or form a consideration in business or government policy.
Breeding. First off, generally pigs are fed so heavily they are obese to the point of males not being able to have sex. There is a profession that goes around and teaches farmers how to get a male pig on top of the female, make him hard and insert the penis in order to breed.
Once that lovely job is done, females are normally kept immobile in small crates where they can have 2 actions. Lay down or stand up. almost always they cannot move backwards or forwards. sometimes the crates are wide enough they can lay down on their side and stretch their legs through or under the bars. More sympathetic cultures banned these but factory farms in many nations still use this style. so the pregnant mom stays in these couple positions for say 6 to 8 weeks until birthing. They are moved to another age basically the same but has an addition for the piglets to hang out in , also tiny. bars hold the mom in place so the piglets can nurse. once the mom becomes less productive, sausage factory.
Raise out pens are probably the happiest place on a typical pig farm in taiwan. Each farmer has their own way, but the space provided is normally measured by feed and waste logistics. these are basically open walled metal roof buildings with concrete floors for waste removal, see below. the farms i was involved with would be roughly 8x8m and house about 50 pigs . Its hard to estimate meter per pig, but seemed the floor space would be filled with about 30 to 50% pig volume from a 2d aerial view. Highly variable. Disease.is also a big factor in population density.
pig feed. Everyone has probably seen the buckets on the street, or on the back of garbage trucks, people empty their kitchen scraps into. Pig food. nevermind, Imagine the issues with that yourself. There.is also an entire industry of people , normally in higher populated areas, going around to restaurants, food processing plants etc and taking their waste products to make into other things. Despite their company registration, often this means pig feed stuff. Actually i have mixed feelings on this is is more sustainable in many ways. Issues come into play when animal feed is supposed to be regulated, eg ractopamine, And street side garbage bins get into the pork, ie our food supply. so its a joke. I feel it.is good when factories etc use their food waste as they are, ahem, regulated and food safe already. that gets into FDA sourcing law which would be quite logical if it were ever followed and adhered to in this case. shocker alert: it isnt…
Waste. Actually this.is.one thing that actually tends to be inspected semi-properly. Though it is also kind of China style in that they follow the law, but the law was downgraded to make it easier. Anyway. Pig waste is washed back into holding ponds to bubble away for xxx amount of time, after which is usually dumped into the ditch. Never mind ditches drain into rivers and into the ocean where lots high quality seafood can be caught. Lots to be said on waste. Never mind things like nitrogen, if only that was the issue. Medications are probably the biggest issue. Secondary things like bacteria and such pathogens get around. Ditches here are quite filthy. Not just pig poop though, raw human sewage is a frequent friendly in ditches here as well. next time a fly tickles your lip, remember where they hang out.
Diseased pigs. I find it ironic how many Buddhist pig farmers there are. Other animals too. Their religion preaches veganism and not killing animals. Taiwans solution, raise animals, give them life. Their texts say little of essentially torturing them their whole life and hiring other people to.do the killing. No use for these hypocrites. Thankfully most pork producers are daoists. At least they are unapologetic about their extreme ways. Check out temples that force feed pigs to be3x the size for their ceremonies. Its a mind blowing thing to see in person. Horrible, but mind blowing.
So what happens when pigs, especially small ones, are deathly sick? Forget western values jn getting vets. instead of killing the sick pig, which would be the most humane thing to.do after trying to help it get better, they take it to the road side, and leave it there to die in the sun without food or water. ts always a game. How does It die? Dehydration, starvation, heat stroke or the original disease or issue that got it stuck out on the road. This practice makes me sick to the stomach, but is standard and government sanctioned.
This leads into my last point on this post.
couple decades ago there
Probably the absolute most serious problem even the psychopaths should care about. I have gotten in trouble a couple times for talking about this publicly so wont name names or areas. But everyone in the pork industry knows about this.
Foot and mouth outbreak in taiwan was insanely serious. It impacted the entire industry for many years, including the banning of taiwan imported pork into various countries like japan. This ties into the current pork lobby situation. A few things happened that were important, but I think 2 main points stand out: the cause and the solution.
First the solution. Mass killing of pigs was nothing short of a horror movie experience on the farms. Governments and their contracted companies come into your farm. Explain it all. wearing full hazmat suites and with large trucks. they walk through your farm killing each pig. The sound and sight is pretty intense to anyone who has emotion. pigs are loaded into trucks and taken away. Either burned, buried or illegally dumped to flow out at sea. In our situation buried was the method as my family owned a lot of farmland. they dug massive pits and loaded thousands of pigs and buried them. A lot of farms are like this. Safety measures taken: hazmat suites when killing and loading. After loading, nothing else considered except 2m of dirt must cover the top pig. Genius!
Now the part I have gotten in trouble for. The cause. Maybe not the first cause.of the disease, but the cause of the spread. In taiwan there are special trucks that are given the duty of picking up dead pigs from the side of the road. See above. Not just pigs, they pick up moat dead farmed animals. 2 issues occur with this fugging STUPID method of operation. first, animals that are sick are left streetside for 1 to 7 days before death. this allows dogs, rodents, birds, insects and etc to pick pieces from them and locally spread the disease via natural means. Stupid. Like REALLY goddam stupid!
Second, they must dispose of said corpses via above mentioned truck service this is where the spread of the disease that cripple taiwans entire industry happened. The diseased pigs were left at farm A. Farms B through Z all had dead pigs but not from this disease. the trucks literally drove around all the countryside of taiwan with diseased pigs, leaking liquids, flies and animals eating and spreading the disease all through taiwan. This directly lead to taiwanese pork being banned. so when I hear the pork lobby talking about its 90% market share on domestic pork sales I dont know whether to laugh of fucking cry. It is absurd, and watching these morons on tv talk economy etc in this situation, I get red mad. we are facing war with china, and this shitshow is what is holding us back from making allies to help against.ww3??? Sometimes I wonder if we just deserve china. At least their government are open and unapologenic about being oppressive and retarded 
