Dubai's sheep, camels and cows to be micro-chipped

Top Stories

Dubais sheep, camels and cows to be micro-chipped

Dubai - All farm animals in Dubai have to be registered, tagged and micro-chipped under the new regulations.

  • Follow us on
  • google-news
  • whatsapp
  • telegram

Published: Wed 28 Oct 2015, 12:00 AM

Last updated: Wed 28 Oct 2015, 5:09 PM

Sheep, goats, camels and cows in Dubai farms will soon start sporting ID tags and micro-chips as part of new rules by the Dubai Municipality to regulate the animal husbandry sector.
All farm animals in Dubai have to be registered, tagged and micro-chipped under the new regulations, a senior official said on Tuesday.Speaking on the sidelines of the 10th Dubai International Food Safety Conference, Louai Abdel-rahman Ahmed, principal veterinary specialist with the Public Health Services Department, said the pilot phase of the registration has already begun.
Dubai already has a system of manually collecting data on farm animals."Every four years, we go door to door and count the farm animals.... The new registration programme will make it mandatory for farmers or farm owners to register their animals with us."
The new system will be akin to the registration and tagging system in place for pet animals.It will help get better data about the population and distribution of the farm animals, maintain surveillance, control their diseases, and improve their productivity.
It has also helped at tackling the challenge of tracking animal movement.
"There is very high movement of animals between the emirates. It's a big challenge for us to track them."
As per the available data, there are some 17,000 commercial and traditional farms and temporary pens in Dubai housing around 400,000 farm animals. Of these about 70,000 are camels, said Ahmed. The municipality is also launching an initiative to boost production in local farms by supporting farmers to market dairy and poultry products.
Titled "Our Food From Our Own Farms", the project will encourage local breeders to com-mercialise their products.
"There are farmers who discard large quantity of eggs because they don't have the means to sell them. We need to change the behaviour of local breeders and help them benefit from their products."
A centre to help the farmers is in the pipeline and the sale of their products will be regulated.
"They must follow safety and standards. Their sale will be regulated," said Ahmed.Dr. Peter Nagy, head of the department at Camelcious from Emirates Industry for Camel Milk and Products, welcomed the move.
"It's a very good idea, but the implementation will be challenging," he said.
sajila@khaleejtimes.com


More news from