His Excellency Dr. Abdullah bin Muhammad Belhaif Al Nuaimi, Minister of Climate Change and Environment of the UAE, said that the ministry intends, during the next two months, to launch a new system of food safety standards and requirements, to ensure that no imported food enters the country except from the first and highest classification globally to keep pace with security and safety standards, and the system will be strengthened.
Local control over the safety of local production and levels of pesticide residues by launching the largest central food inspection laboratory, in cooperation with all inspection centers at the state level. His Excellency added: This step aims to enhance the capabilities of the inspection and quarantine centers attached to all state ports and accelerate their work pace to ensure the speed of examination procedures for food consignments incoming to the country and their entry into the local market, with the aim of raising the levels of quality, efficiency, and safety of the imported product.
He stressed that the ministry is currently working, in cooperation with the private sector, to prepare to launch a huge national project soon to market the local agricultural product, enhance consumer confidence in it, increase its market share, and enhance its competitiveness. His Excellency added that the Ministry intends this week to launch the Youth Food Security Stations project, which aims to develop integrated “modern agricultural” stations that employ the latest technologies, in line with the climatic conditions of the UAE, to qualify and develop young people’s skills in the agricultural field and train them to implement and manage various modern agricultural systems.
With regard to the UAE’s efforts to promote the process of achieving carbon neutrality, Belhaif Al Nuaimi confirmed that the ministry is currently working to attract and motivate more private sector institutions to join the efforts of the UAE to reach a carbon-neutral world by employing modern technologies to reduce rates, their carbon emissions, signing partnerships and memoranda of understanding with these institutions and providing them with the necessary knowledge to contribute to the process of achieving carbon neutrality through many research and studies that illustrate the most important mechanisms and techniques for achieving this goal.
He continued, “Working for the sake of humanity and ensuring a better future for current and future generations is the most important priority for the directions of the UAE, so the country has adopted in its orientations the integration of climate action in all sectors and fields, especially the food sector, with the aim of enhancing food security and sustainability, so the focus was on strengthening Innovation in the field of food (agricultural and animal) to increase the capabilities of adapting to the repercussions of climate and reducing its causes.
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