Given our mission of promoting Taiwan’s animal industry, we are charged mainly with the following tasks: collect, analyze, and disseminate production and sales information; regulate domestic production and sales of livestock and poultry products; test and analyze livestock and poultry products; perform meat inspections at slaughterhouses; conduct certification to enhance animal product safety; registration and production testing of breeding swine; provide livestock and poultry health services.
Topping the list of the NAIF’s important missions is to collect, analyze, and disseminate production and sales information. To keep track of the latest information on the production and sales of livestock and poultry products at home and abroad, we serve as an intermediary for exchanging intelligence with organizations overseas. We have established an official website and put all data online to make it easily accessible to the industry. We also publish monthly and weekly bulletins that deliver all-encompassing, timely news covering domestic and foreign animal industries, as well as provide special reports and in-depth analyses of production and sales .
We also hold regular market review meetings and issue early warnings whenever warranted by market changes.
To enhance industry competitiveness and ensure sustainable development, we have been devoted to the task of regulating domestic production and sales of animal products as well. Based on the annual production goals set by the Ministry of Agriculture, we take various stabilization measures… and organize promotional events whenever warranted to help consumers appreciate the characteristics of domestic animal products and bolster their support. To promote exports of quality animal products, we have also helped local firms participate in international food shows in recent years.
When the possibility of an imbalance between production and sales emerges, the NAIF issues early warnings if necessary to keep up an orderly marketplace. When demand exceeds supply, we resort to emergency imports or take out existing stockpiles to keep a ceiling on market prices while meeting the needs of processors, major consumers, and households. Conversely, we stand ready to buy up frozen livestock and poultry products or launch promotional events to stimulate consumption when the market is hit by oversupply. These measures have proven effective in easing imbalances in animal product prices and output and ensuring income stability for producers.
When it comes to testing and analyzing livestock and poultry products, we conduct various tests of agricultural, fishery, and livestock products as well as their byproducts in line with government policy to ensure their quality and safety. We also perform tests for backward tracking of feed chemicals. Drawing on the latest testing technology, top-notch professionals, and fully up-to-date equipment, we can effectively test agricultural, fishery, and livestock products, thereby ensuring food safety and helping uphold people’s health and dietary quality. External approval in the form of international laboratory certification enables us to bolster the credibility of test results and give the government and industry a truly reliable service.
Moreover, the NAIF is commissioned by the government to recruit and train specialized personnel and dispatch them to perform meat inspections at slaughterhouses. As we strive to make domestic animal products clean and safe so as to ensure safe meat consumption, we are fully committed to complying with international conventions, keeping up with global trends, and enhancing Taiwan’s competitiveness in the international community.
Nowadays everyone demands food safety. Product certification is both a badge of honor for producers and a mark of trust for consumers. Therefore, the NAIF is totally uncompromising when it comes to CAS certification as well as certification of product traceability and organic animal products. Upon signing contracts with the NAIF, all ranches, processing plants of livestock and poultry products become subject to our follow-up inspections and random checks. Separately, each year the NAIF organizes food safety and autonomous management training courses devised for food service companies, nutritionists, and school lunch purchasing personnel respectively. Every meat-processing plant in the country is eager to secure NAIF certification, now widely recognized as a mark of trust for consumers in their purchases of livestock and poultry products.
For Taiwan’s livestock industry, hog raising accounts for the largest sector by production value. Further improvement of breeding swine is thus essential to promoting the hog-raising industry. Through the registration and production testing of breeding swine, the NAIF has been able to establish a nationwide database complete with bloodline and performance data.
The NAIF adopts a matter-of-fact approach toward selecting the best breeding swine by measuring and recording daily gains, feed efficiency, and back-fat thickness. Auctions are then held to spread the genes of top-line breeding swine to hog farms around the country, to improve overall production efficiency.
Separately, the NAIF’s breeding swine testing station at Hsinhua has been a recipient of ISO 90001 certification since 2003.
Livestock and poultry health weighs heavily on food safety and the sustainability of the animal industry. In addition to regulating and balancing production and sales, the NAIF is proactive to ensure livestock and poultry health by means of procuring foot-and-mouth disease vaccines, offering on-the-spot guidance at ranches, and hosting sanitation campaigns. Meanwhile, we have set up four poultry health centers and labs in different parts of the country to provide the industry with consultation and testing services, as well as to assist the government in monitoring various diseases.
In 2011, the NAIF secured ISO 17025 certification, which attests to its world-standard lab technology and quality.
Faced with the intrusion of porcine epidemic diarrhea and avian flu, the NAIF also helps farms develop self-defense and anti-epidemic capabilities. It draws on the country’s three-tier management mechanism for epidemic prevention and consolidates industry efforts and resources to form regional defense lines nationwide.