‘Govt trying to ensure safe, hygienic food for consumers’

LAHORE: Punjab Livestock and Dairy Development Minister Asif Saeed Manais has said the use of processed chicken adds food safety to chicken meat products and improves human health status. 

“Processed meat is ready to cook and saves a lot of time of the consumers. There is a need to spread awareness about the quality and safety of the processed meat and its convenience,” the minister said while addressing the inaugural ceremony of 1st international conference on ‘Poultry Processing: Farm to Fork Management’ arranged by the Department of Poultry Production of the University of Veterinary and Animal Sciences (UVAS) in collaboration with Higher Education Commission (HEC), Pakistan Poultry Association (PPA) and a food company on Wednesday. 

Speakers from the US, Canada, Thailand, South Korea, Netherland, Malaysia and China and from the poultry industry and universities of Pakistan are attending the conference.

Minister Asif Saeed Manais said Pakistan is in the list of protein deficient countries and poultry is important to overcome this deficiency. “The poultry industry is providing people with high quality protein at a very low cost. Without poultry industry, Pakistan may have a severe nutritional deficiency and price of red meat would be sky high,” he said, adding Punjab government is trying to ensure safe and hygienic food for people. 

UVAS VC Prof Dr Talat Naseer Pasha spoke about misconceptions about poultry meat. “I being an animal nutritionist declare with authority and responsibility that no steroids are added to poultry feed and accelerated growth of chicken are due to genetics.

If you give same feed to desi chicken, they will never grow like broilers,” Prof Pasha asserted. He said UVAS is establishing an export facilitation centre for livestock and poultry industry under a development project funded by the Punjab government. He said UVAS is working closely with Pakistan Poultry Industry. He said poultry industry is truly a science-based industry and has adopted internationally best practices in most of its value chain. He said UVAS’s departments of poultry production, meat technology, animal nutrition, food sciences and veterinary faculty have their own commercial level poultry breeding farms, broiler & layer production and research farms, poultry hatchery, feed mills along with state-of-the-art disease diagnostic labs, animal nutrition and poultry bio-digestibility lab, meat technology lab, sensory evaluation and labs food safety labs, etc. He said Meat Technology Department is setting up a poultry processing facility at Ravi Campus next year. He said that the purpose of this conference is to educate farmers to produce chicken specified for processing needs keeping in mind the export perspectives, equip processors with latest knowledge and techniques of poultry processing and educate consumers regarding chicken meat quality and to change their perception towards processed chicken meat.

Khalil Sattar from a food company gave a presentation on poultry marketing and export related issues. Later, the minister and other guests visited the stalls set up by 25 companies on the occasion. Five technical sessions, 35 presentations on different topics and a mini exhibition are main features of the conference.

Theme of the conference will cover all the major areas of production & nutrition aspects of meat quality, Halal slaughtering, food safety measures, capacity enhancement of academia, medicine residuals, poultry welfare during live hauling, poultry product development, shelf life and packaging, poultry meat and consumer health, rendering and waste disposal, etc.

151 students leave for China today: Some 151 students are departing for China on Thursday (today) to learn Chinese language in the fourth stage of Chinese Language Scholarship Programme which is being run by the Punjab government in collaboration with University of Education. 

In this regard a ceremony was held at University of Education which was attended by Punjab Minister for Higher Education Raza Ali Gilani and the Vice Chancellor University of Education Dr Rauf-i-Azam among others. Talking to the audience, Vice Chancellor Dr Rauf-i-Azam said so far 345 students have been sent to China under the programme. He said: “We can proudly claim that we have selected students to ensure merit.”

Minister Raza Ali Gilani thanked the University of Education for its assistance and cooperation to make this programme a big success. He assured the audience of continuing full support of the Punjab government to achieve excellence in higher education across the province.