Taiwan’s Ministry of Agriculture (MOA) and the UK’s Department for Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs (Defra) convened the “7^th Taiwan-UK Joint Agriculture Dialogue” on September 2 in London. This is the first time this meeting has been held in the UK, marking a new milestone for bilateral agricultural cooperation and market access for agricultural products. The meeting had a particularly positive impact on deepening exchanges and collaboration between the livestock and aquatic products industries of the two sides.

The MOA states that over the past six meetings of the Taiwan-UK Joint Agriculture Dialogue, the two sides had already accumulated broad experience and made significant achievements in cooperation related to the livestock and aquatic products industries. Both being island countries, Taiwan and the UK share issues of concern in the field of fisheries. Moreover, faced with expanding energy needs in the era of climate change and AI, the two sides will work together to seek cooperative opportunities in industrial sustainability and energy transition. This most recent meeting specially focused on issues related to offshore wind power generation and fisheries. Of these, offshore wind power is a key direction of Taiwan’s future green energy development. Meanwhile, the UK’s Centre for Environment, Fisheries and Aquaculture Science (CEFAS) is a worldwide leader in related research and in the field of communication with stakeholders. The MOA says that the two sides aimed to use this meeting as a starting point to formally launch cooperation and jointly explore ways to balance fisheries and wind power development.

In addition, the shortage of public veterinary personnel not only adversely impacts biosecurity in the livestock industry and the veterinary services system, it also affects the long-term development of related industries. Taiwan and the UK will in the future cooperate in training of veterinary personnel, enhancing livestock disease prevention capabilities, and attracting more young veterinarians into agriculture.

The MOA points out that this meeting enabled the two sides to continue to deepen cooperation in the fields of agriculture and fisheries, and laid the groundwork for future industrial sustainability, energy transition, and human resources training in the two parties.

A group photo of the delegations to the “7^th Taiwan-UK Joint Agriculture Dialogue.” The meeting was presided over by MOA Department of International Affairs Deputy Director General Wen Tsu-kang (sixth from right) and UK Regional Agricultural Counsellor Rickie Jennings (sixth from left).

The “7^th Taiwan-UK Joint Agriculture Dialogue” was held for the first time in the UK. After the meeting, members of the two delegations took this photo outside the UK’s Department for Business and Trade.