Islamabad: Stakeholders representing the civil society levelled the ground here on Wednesday to mobilise support for a draft Organic Farming Policy here on Wednesday.
The occasion was a seminar organised by TheNetwork for Consumer Protection in collaboration with Consumer International (CI) and the Swedish Society for Nature Conservation. Its purpose was to analyse existing safe food regulatory frameworks and formulate a future course of action with recommendations on how to make food safe for consumers by reducing the use of excessive pesticides and artificial fertilizers, and having an organic food policy.
The seminar focused on building an alliance with civil society’s stakeholders to target policymakers as well as the Ministry of National Food Security and Research to build support for a draft on Organic Farming Policy.
This would help build a strategy to overcome future challenges and ensure availability of safer organic food choices which is also the foremost consumer right developed by CI in the light of UN Guidelines for Consumer Protection, 1985 ‘the right to basic needs,’ including consumers’ right to adequate and safe food.
Speaking on the occasion, the CEO of TheNetwork, Nadeem Iqbal, pointed out that in recent times, the service delivery sector has been taken over by corporate entities which has resulted in a trust deficit between the state and citizens.
Professor Imran Hashmi, associate dean at NUST, was of the view that pesticides are carcinogenic in nature and can result in various hazardous diseases which in future can hamper life expectancy. “One pesticide laden apple can reduce life expectancy by one day,” he shared.
Dr. Hassan Orooj, CDA’s health director, quoted a study, according to which the prevalence of cancer is 26 times more in areas where pesticides are abundantly used as compared to areas where there is no use of pesticides.
Dr. Shahid Zia, managing director of
Lok-Sanjh said, “In all neighbouring countries of Pakistan such as Nepal, India and Bangladesh, there exists a policy on organic and safe food but we lack any such initiative and currently there is no defined policy on organic food.”
Zia-ul-Islam, director of Pakistan Environment Protection Agency, emphasised the need to generate demand amongst consumers regarding their rights and what is beneficial or hazardous to their health. Internationally, the trade volume of organic food amounts to about US $50 billion and sadly Pakistan’s share is zero.
Dr. Sher Muhammad, senior director at the National Institute of Organic Agriculture, pointed out that organic rice from Pakistan is exported to European countries and branded as Indian in the international market. In Pakistan, about 37million hectors of land is barren which can be considered ideal for any type of farming.