Seminar on agri diseases control held

Islamabad:“China and Pakistan enjoy great cooperation potential in animal husbandry and agricultural and side-line products. The two sides should continue to strengthen in-depth cooperation in the livestock industry and open a new chapter for China-Pakistan agricultural exchanges.

This was stated by Ghulam Qadir, Pakistan’s Trade and Investment Counsellor in China, while addressing a seminar on Pakistani dairy buffaloes’ major diseases control. The counsellor also stated that Pakistan has the capability of processing dairy products for export to Middle Eastern countries and expressed hope that more Chinese dairy companies would join the dairy industry chain, Gwadar Pro reported it on Saturday. He stated that “the two sides should continue to strengthen major animal disease prevention and control, establish foot-and-mouth disease-free zones, and promote the export of Pakistani buffalo genetic material, livestock, and poultry products to China and other international markets.”

This week, the China-Pakistan Agricultural Science and Technology Innovation & Extension Centre, China Agricultural University, hosted a cooperation seminar on the prevention and control of major dairy buffalo diseases in Pakistan.

In her welcoming speech, Teng Cuijin, Chairman of Royal Cell hoped that through the exchange of this seminar, scientific research institutes and industry leading enterprises would jointly promote the prevention and control of major animal diseases of buffaloes in Pakistan, and meet the quarantine inspection technical standards of the Chinese Customs.

On the occasion, Director of the National Animal Transmissible Spongiform Encephalopathy Laboratory, Agricultural University, underlined the prevention and control of animal diseases as a key issue to solve the bottlenecks in the trade between China and Pakistan.

He pointed out that the sensitive and specific diagnostic techniques introduced by Prof. Yang Lifeng from the university will help build disease-free farms and monitor BSE (bovine spongiform encephalopathy) in Pakistan.

The coordinator of the China-Pakistan Agricultural Science and Technology Innovation & Extension Centre, presented the cooperation content, technical framework, and preliminary cooperation basis of major cattle and sheep epidemic prevention and control projects in Pakistan. He also discussed the construction plan and schedule of the Pakistan buffalo embryo testing laboratory and major epidemic disease testing laboratory in 2023 with the project leaders.