ON July 18, Pakistan lifted a 13-year-old ban on the import of live animals from the countries affected by Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy, commonly known as the ‘mad cow disease’. The ban was imposed to protect livestock from the risk of contracting the disease.

The countries worst hit by the mad cow disease, have, surprisingly, been the highly developed states of the West. The disease started with death of a cow on a farm in England, in 1984 but it took two years to officially identify the disease. In an effort to control it, millions of animals were culled. The UK government in 2000 finally accepted, after a long and independent inquiry, that the failures of successive administrations had contributed to the Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE) catastrophe.

Now, the same Western countries want Pakistan to open its doors for their animals presumably fully recovered from the deadly disease. In fact, they had for long been pressurising Pakistan to withdraw the curbs on their export. On May 8, US Deputy Secretary of State William J Burns, during a meeting with Finance Minister Ishaq Dar in Islamabad, expressed the hope that ‘import of live animals from the

The question arises: who benefits from the lifting of the ban on imports of live animals from Western countries. In Pakistan, only the dairy industry has shown interest in such imports as this will enable it to source animals from multiple countries and breeds

US will be allowed by Pakistan’, according to an official handout. Dar assured Burns of an ‘appropriate decision’ in this regard soon.

The US officials, being too eager to sell their cattle to Pakistan, raised the issue even during a recent Pakistan-US Trade Investment Framework Agreement meeting. Senior officials of other concerned countries had also approached the commerce ministry for an early decision in this regard.

The question arises: who benefits from lifting of the ban on imports of live animals from the Western countries. In Pakistan, only the dairy industry has shown interest in such imports as this will enable it to source animals from multiple countries and breeds. Currently, Pakistan is importing most of its dairy cattle from Australia. For meat and dairy business, the imports from that part of the world would be costly, barely affordable by few for business. Besides, Pakistani administration has been visibly reluctant to favour the imports because if some of the animals somehow bring the BSE in any form with them, it will be difficult to detect the disease due to non availability of a testing facility..

According to July 18 order, the import of only those animals will be allowed from the countries which have been declared as having ‘negligible risk’ by the World Organisation for Animal Health and its Office of International des Epizooties (OIE) which is a Paris-based inter-governmental organisation with Pakistan being one of its members. The OIE has currently classified countries into three categories: negligible BSE risk, controlled BSE risk and undetermined BSE risk countries. The OIE updates the risk status on a regular basis.

According to a resolution adopted by the World Assembly of Delegates of the OIE on May 27, 2014, the following are some of the 36 countries declared as having ‘negligible risk’, the US, Australia, Belgium, Denmark, Brazil, Luxembourg, Italy, India, Japan, South Korea, Netherland, Norway, New Zealand, Singapore and Sweden.

Among the 17 countries declared as ‘controlled BSE risk’ included the UK, Canada, Germany, France, Spain and Switzerland. The imports of animals from these countries will not be allowed as according to the official decision, only the countries falling in the category of the ‘negligible risk’ will be the beneficiary of the ministry of commerce notification.

At recent meetings on this matter between the commerce and other related ministries, it was agreed that ban on: (i) import of feeds containing meat, bone meal and greaves, etc., derived from BSE infected cattle shall remain; (ii) import of live animals from BSE-infected countries shall continue in general. However, imports from countries which have been declared as “negligible BSE risk” by OIE shall be allowed; (iii) animals from only such herds shall be allowed for import where no incidence of BSE has been reported for the last 11 years, and certified by the veterinary authority of the exporting country. The ministry of food security will make efforts to conduct a BSE risk assessment in Pakistan and apply to OIE for declaring Pakistan a “BSE negligible risk country”.

Published in Dawn, Economic & Business, Aug 11th, 2014