On June 30, 2025, progress was made toward completing three post-2025 policy papers focused on the Food, Agriculture, and Forestry (FAF) sector in the ASEAN region. The Third Task Force meeting in Nha Trang, Vietnam, drew approximately 80 participants, including representatives from ASEAN Member States, the ASEAN Secretariat, and external partners. The focus was on finalizing the Strategic Framework for Food, Agriculture, and Forestry in ASEAN, with plans for these policy papers to be adopted at the upcoming ASEAN Ministers on Agriculture and Forestry (AMAF) meeting planned in October this year.

AJFVC, as part of the ASEAN-Japan MIDORI Cooperation Plan, attended the meeting. The discussions covered a broad range of activities under six Strategic Thrusts, including promoting sustainable and regenerative measures, enhancing trade and market connectivity, and fostering public-private partnerships and digital innovation within the FAF sectors, highlighting AJFVC”s clear rationale throughout the document.

Following the meeting, a visit to the RETAQ Center in Hanoi took place. The “Project for Enhancing Laboratory Capacities of the Reference Testing and Agrifood Quality Consultancy (RETAQ) Center for Ensuring Safety of Agricultural and Fisheries Food” is underway, facilitated by technical assistance from the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA). JICA had provided a wide variety of advanced equipment that covers most food safety testing needs, such as GC-MS, LC-TOF-MS, and real-time PCR systems, under its grand aid scheme as well.

The RETAQ Center extends its supports to AJFVC’s initiatives, specifically through supplementary training for Lao PDR by Dr. Kitamura, Chief Advisor of the RETAQ Centre Project. This training, successfully held in July, aimed to strengthen the technical capacity of the Plant Protection Center (PPC) and other relevant divisions of the Department of Agriculture in Lao PDR. In addition, utilizing the RETAQ center’s facilities and equipment, along with local human resources (mainly counterparts of the RETAQ center project), a training session on pesticide residue analysis is scheduled for August for selected analysts from relevant laboratories in Vietnam. The training is expected to enhance the region’s food safety testing capacity significantly.