Chair’s Remarks

By

Dr. Bao-Ji Chen

Chairman of the Workshop

Director General of Animal Industry Department

Council of Agriculture

Chinese Taipei

Honorable Dr. Cheng-Taung Wang, Director General of he Taiwan Livestock Research Institute; Mr. Ming-Lai Wang, Deputy Director-General of the International Cooperation Department, Council of Agriculture; Distinguished Resource Speakers; APEC Member Delegations; Ladies and Gentlemen:

It is my great honor and pleasure to serve as the Chairman of this important activity of the APEC Agricultural Technical Cooperation Experts Group, Workshop on Conservation and Utilization of Farm Animal and Aquatic Genetic Resources. As the Chairman of the Workshop, I would like to extend my sincere welcome to all resource speakers and member delegations to attend this Workshop. This Workshop is convened based on the consensus reached at the First Meeting of the ATC Experts Group held in Manila in September 1997. Chinese Taipei is honored to host this meaningful gathering. Statistics from Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics(DGBAS) showed that 2.69 percent of the Gross Domestic Products came from agriculture in 1997, which contributed to roughly $NT219 billion of the whole economic pie. Animal Production alone accounted for more than 40 percent of the agricultural production.

Therefore, I sincerely hope that this workshop will build more networks and that the inputs in this workshop will contribute to the whole development process in farm animals and aquatic genetic resources in the APEC region.

This Workshop is sponsored by the Council of Agriculture with the logistic support kindly provided by the Taiwan Livestock Research Institute (TLRI). I therefore would like to thank Director-General Wang of the TLRI and his staff for their great efforts in timely organizing this workshop and their hospitality extended to us. Now, I would like to invite Director-General Wang of the TLRI to deliver his Welcome Remarks.

APEC Agriculture Technical Cooperation (ATC) was initiated at the APEC Leaders Meeting held in Bogor, Indonesia in November 1994, and had been formalized as an Experts Group of APEC in November 1996. Chinese Taipei has been honored to serve as the Lead Shepherd of ATC since 1995. Today we are honored to have Dr. Te-yeh Ku, the Coordinator for the ATCEG’s Lead Shepherd, to present an Opening Remarks at the Workshop. Since Dr. Ku is currently abroad for some unavoidable commitments, hereby I would like to invite Mr. Ming-Lai Wang, Deputy Diretor General of the International Cooperation Department, Council of Agriculture to read the Opening Remarks on behalf of Dr. Ku.

According to the Program, we will have a group photo outside the meeting room. May we all proceed to take a photo and then have the coffee break.