RECORDER REPORT

PESHAWAR: Chairman Dairy Science Park Professor Dr Mohammad Subhan Qureshi has said two regulatory authorities including district administration and KP Food Safety and Halal Food Authority have threatened the businesses of small farmers, butchers and marketing outlets in the name of prices and quality in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa

Talking to this scribe, the Dr Mohammad Subhan Qureshi said that the regulatory authorities have been engaged in regulating the prices and quality of the products, respectively. However, no appropriate technical support and stakeholders representation is available to these authorities for making justified decisions.

He said that these food based entrepreneurs as income sources for poor families, have never been provided technical and marketing support in providing quality food to the consumers and self employment to the youth. Dairy Science Park and KP Chamber of Agriculture have joined hands to provide a way out to these issues through their prolonged struggle.

Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) region is mostly mountainous and arid, rich in natural resources, predominantly livestock like sheep, goats, cattle, buffaloes, and poultry.

The total value of livestock heads is Rs1.09 trillion (US $10 billion). However, the huge resource base can neither provide good economic return to the producers, nor quality food to the consumers.

These holdings threaten public health safety. The main reasons behinds this state of affairs are poor socio-economic status of the farmers, lack of resources and focus on part of the state institutions, and a hostile marketing system. Dairy Science Park (DSP) has been working on generating solutions to these issues.

Emerging industries in milk and meat processing and marketing have been provided technical and Quality Control certification support to relieve legal threats from the District Administration, who focus on price capping of milk and meat rather than quality.

Meat shops established on modern lines of hygiene produce quality beef; however such facilities are raided by the government agencies on the basis of higher prices. DSP has been facilitating inspection of such facilities; providing SOPs for quality standards and issuing certificates. Similar services are being extended to private slaughter houses and meat/milk processing centres and other emerging entrepreneurs. Sandia National Lab USA has been supporting DSP under a Biorisk Management Collaboration.

He told that five consultative workshops were held in Amsterdam, Dubai, Bangkok, Puket and Colombo, participated by 70 members/times of DSP; and developed contents on biorisk management into the DVM curriculum in Pakistani Universities and food value chain. Selected faculty members of the DVM degree awarding Universities would be trained in BRM under DSP-SNL collaboration..