In line with MOEW continuous efforts towards its commitment to provide safe and healthy food for the country’s nationals and residents that are in accordance with global best practices and standards. Considering the Ministry’s strategic objective in enhancing the food safety and sustainability of the local food production segment, which is being made possible through the development and implementation of food safety legislation and regulations such as imposing tighter controls on animal and plant quarantine stations, imported food consignments and complying with ministerial decrees that bans or allows the entry of living animals and birds and their related bi-products from quarantine-diseases affected countries.

The Ministry has recently issued a decree on the temporary importation ban on all kinds of living birds (domesticated, wild or ornamental), their meats and bi-products from the Italian Republic. According to the Ministry, the ban will continue to be in place up until Italy’s Bird Flu epidemiological situation has changed. The move follows after the World Organization for Animal Health (OIE) recently confirmed the existence of hotbeds of the highly pathogenic Avian Influenza virus in Italy.

 The Ministerial Decree, however, excludes heat-treated meat of birds that are in accordance with the provisions cited in Ministerial Decree No. 49 of 2012. As a member of many global organizations focused on animal health and welfare, the Ministry of Environment and Water constantly follows up on new reports issued by these organizations with regards to the situation concerning epidemic diseases from around the world. The Ministry is calling upon all suppliers, companies and individual consumers to follow and comply with the recently issued decree in order to ensure the health and safety of everyone in the UAE.