Heads of Government of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) wrapped up their two-day Intersessional Meeting in Roseau, Dominica on Friday 12 March with agreement on the establishment of the Caribbean Agricultural Health and Food Safety Agency (CAHFSA).

The Agency will be launched in Paramaribo, Suriname on Thursday 18 March 2010 a day before a special meeting of the Council for Trade and Economic Development (COTED) on Agriculture is convened in Paramaribo.

CAHFSA has as its goal the establishment of an effective and efficient Regional Sanitary and Phyto-Sanitary (SPS) regime. The Agency will also facilitate the harmonisation of the relevant laws and administrative practices required by the Revised Treaty of Chaguaramas, and provide assistance to Member States in that regard.

Jamaica will assume the chairmanship of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) in July instead of Haiti, the Inter-sessional Meeting of the Conference of Heads of Government has decided.

In the Chairmanship rotation schedule, Haiti was next in line to chair the Community. But Haiti’s situation following the 12 January earthquake dictates that it would not be in a position to assume the Chairmanship.

His Excellency René Préval, President of Haiti, acknowledged that it would have been difficult to manage the reconstruction of Haiti as well as CARICOM matters.

Under the theme "Promoting Competitiveness in the Food Sector", the CARICOM Regional Organisation for Standards and Quality (CROSQ) and the Antigua and Barbuda Bureau of Standards (ABBS) successfully completed two (2) workshops on food standards, namely Code of Practice for Food Hygiene and Specification for Labelling of Pre-packaged Foods.

These workshops were conducted on March 17 in St. John's Antigua under the auspices of the IADB-funded Project for Small and Medium-sized Enterprise (SME)    Competitiveness.

A total of 43 persons attended these workshops, including 11 students from the Antigua State College (Food Hygiene workshop).

The CARICOM Regional Organisation for Standards and Quality (CROSQ), in collaboration with the Guyana National Bureau of Standards (GNBS), the Inter-American Metrology System (SIM) and Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt (PTB – the German National Metrology Institute) will deliver two workshops entitled “Metrological and Technical Requirements of Non-Automatic Weighing Instruments, OIML R76:2006” from 22-23 March 2010 and “Verification of Fuel Dispenser” from 24-25 March 2010.

These workshops aim to provide Legal Metrology Personnel (and by extension support Member States) with theoretical and practical knowledge in the areas of Verification of Weighing Instrument and Fuel Dispensers. The objective of the workshops is to introduce participants to the underlying concepts of Legal Metrology in the area of Weighing Instrument and Fuel Dispensers, and will be facilitated by Mr. Manuel Pena and Mr. Dario Alejandro Loza Guerrero, both of CENAM (Centro Nacional de Metrología).