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Food Safety, Environmental Hygiene, Agriculture and Fisheries
With the establishment of a veterinary school at the City University of Hong Kong, the government proposes to expand the current scope of exemptions under the Veterinary Surgeons Registration Ordinance to allow veterinary students to perform a wider variety of veterinary surgery acts under suitable supervision as part of their clinical training. Following public consultation on the proposed amendments in November, the government aims to submit the relevant subsidiary legislation to the Legislative Council in 2021.
Primary Production
Hong Kong's agricultural and fisheries industries are relatively small in scale. The government helps improve their output quality, productivity and competitiveness. The two industries combined employed some 17,750 people directly and produced $4.47 billion of output during the year. Live poultry accounted for 100 per cent of local consumption; cut flowers, 36 per cent; seafood, 21 per cent; live pigs, 16 per cent; freshwater fish, 4 per cent; and vegetables, 1.6 per
cent.
Agricultural Industry
The agricultural industry focuses mainly on producing quality fresh food crops through intensive land use. Most farming is in the New Territories for growing crops, comprising mainly vegetables and cut flowers, with a combined output in 2020 valued at about $368 million. The principal food animals reared are pigs and poultry, which respectively yielded earnings of about $843 million and about $456 million, inclusive of eggs.
The AFCD encourages crop farmers to tap niche markets and sharpen their competitiveness by cultivating safe and quality vegetables. To promote organic farming, the department provides organic farming support to 326 farms occupying 103 hectares of land. It also promotes the use of greenhouse technology for intensive high-value crop production.
The department manages a voluntary Accredited Farm Scheme jointly with a statutory body, the Vegetable Marketing Organisation (VMO), to provide a stable supply of quality and safe vegetables. A total of 313 farms in Hong Kong, Guangdong Province and Ningxia Autonomous Region, occupying 2,717 hectares of land, are accredited under the scheme.
The Controlled Environment Hydroponic Research and Development Centre, a joint set-up between the AFCD and VMO at Cheung Sha Wan Wholesale Vegetable Market, studies the application of state-of-the-art hydroponic cultivation techniques to the agricultural sector, to enhance the output of local vegetable production. The technology utilises limited space to produce high-value crops indoors all year round under a completely controlled environment without weather disruptions.
Leisure farms are popular places for recreation. The department works with the agricultural sector to update information about Hong Kong's leisure farms and uploads the information to a mobile application, Hong Kong Leisure Farms.
Under the New Agriculture Policy, the government promotes the modernisation and sustainable development of local agriculture. A $500 million Sustainable Agricultural
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