By Robert Andre Emmanuel
Veterinarian Dr Nneka Hull James has been appointed to be an animal health specialist for the Caribbean Agricultural Health and Food Safety Agency (CAHFSA)—the regional institution geared towards supporting and coordinating good agricultural practices.
Dr Hull James, who assumes the role on March 1, will be coordinating, facilitating, monitoring and conducting evaluations of national programmes across Caricom to successfully address the harmonisation of animal health in the region.
The Suriname-based institution seeks to enhance regional development in agricultural health and food safety through the application of sanitary and phytosanitary measures.
“CAHFSA is focused on ensuring that we are able to apply agricultural health and food systems in a harmonised manner across the region to have food safety for public health and as a region; it’s important, because even though we are separated as islands once there is an epidemic in a particular island, it can easily spread.
“CAHFSA is that institution that ensures that all of our veterinary bodies within the ministries of agriculture, all of our plant health bodies are really on the same page, working in a harmonious manner, developing protocols that can be utilised and approved at a Caricom level,” Dr Hull James told Observer yesterday.
She said that she was grateful for the opportunity to serve the region and the country in this new capacity, and was looking forward to her role coordinating country initiatives and building great cooperation with the region’s chief veterinary officers.
She referenced how any potential gaps in requirements for animal imports in any of the Caribbean countries could affect all of the region due to the closeness of the islands, particularly when any foreign disease carried by those imported animals could infect local livestock.
“So, in my role, I’ll have the opportunity to facilitate training sessions to share information across the region, just trying to really work with the regional chief veterinary officers to harmonise anything that we’re doing, because at the end of the day, if one island is a fortress when it comes to food security, but a neighbouring island has many weaknesses, then we are all unsafe,” Dr Hull James concluded.
