Ministry Visits

On Thursday, I met Chan Han Hee, Senior Vice President of the Malaysian Agrifood Corporation. He took me to Putrajaya, which is their planned national administrative city (Think Washington, DC without all of the surrounding areas). Our first meeting was at the Ministry of Health to discuss Food Safety, Defense and Traceability. They have a very tough job in a country that is not used to sanitary and phytosanitary regulations. However, the actual enforcement responsibilities lie with the officials in each state. The Ministry simply establishes the policy and does research. They briefed me on their food safety efforts and critical incident plan. We also talked about the relatively new labeling regulations that they have implemented. I enjoyed this visit and felt very welcome. After being in Japan where I met with very few women, it was nice to be in a room with mostly women.

After the meeting Mr. Chan and I looked around the city. It is a very attractive, planned city. Below is a picture of the Mosque and the Prime Ministry building. We also made a brief stop at the botanical gardens.

Our afternoon meeting was at the Ministry of Agriculture. I received briefings from officials from several different divisions. They have a pilot program called MFIT, which is an electronic traceability system. With all of the talk of a food crisis, I asked about their self sufficiency rate and they said it was 72%. This is much better than Japan’s 39%. Malaysian agriculture faces many problems but they seem to be working to fix many of them. I asked about the poultry ceiling price which I had been told in an earlier meeting was below production cost. They said they were meeting with industry people the next day to try to fix this issue. The person who is most involved with trade issues was unable to attend, so I didn’t get many answers on that topic.