With regard to an illegal introduction of livestock products, based on the Act on Domestic Animal Infectious Diseases Control, it was subject to the punishment with penal servitude for a term up to three years or a fine up to one million yen. However, under the practical operation, application of this punishment had been limited to cases with high illegality such as a case of selling illegally introduced livestock products in Japan. With regard to the illegal introduction for the objective of personal consumption and souvenir, Animal Quarantine Service (AQS) had urged the passengers to abandon the products.
Risk of introducing transboundary animal diseases into Japan is increasing, due to the increased illegal introduction of livestock products, following the sharp increase of number of visitors to Japan, e.g. recent isolation of African swine fever virus from passenger baggage illegally introduced from People’s Republic of China.
(Attachment 1: number of cases of illegal introduction of livestock products in passenger baggage. (1.6 time higher within five years.)
2014: around 57,000 cases → 2018: around 94,000 cases）
In light of this situation, in case of detection of illegal introduction of livestock product, in principle, AQS will issue a warning statement for all cases which will be saved into database. In addition, for malicious case such as duplication by a purposeful and malicious manner, AQS will cope rigorously such as to report the case to police or press charges. This has taken place since 22nd April 2019 Monday (Attachment 2).
