2026 Animal Welfare and Sustainable Agriculture and Food Conference opens in Beijing to boost China-Africa agricultural cooperation

China News Service, Beijing, October 15 (Reporter Xu Jing) The 2026 Animal Welfare and Sustainable Agriculture and Food Conference opened on the 15th at the Jinhai Lake International Convention and Exhibition Center in Pinggu District, Beijing. The conference carried out multi-level dialogue and exchanges, released a number of industry research results, and signed a series of industrial cooperation contracts to promote the continuous gathering of international ideas, technologies, and resources, and to promote the high-quality development of regional industries.

The theme of this conference is "Enabling supply chain upgrades through animal welfare and activating new agricultural and food consumption through sustainability". It is jointly hosted by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and the China Association for the Promotion of International Agricultural Cooperation (CAPIAC). As an international event permanently located in Zhongguancun, Pinggu Agriculture, this year's conference shows the distinctive features of higher international participation, wider coverage of the entire industry chain, and stronger industry-side support orientation. Based on industrial reality, taking into account the dual needs of domestic industrial chain upgrading and corporate international development, we are committed to exporting sustainable agricultural and food development paths and Chinese solutions that adapt to local practices.

Zhai Huqu, honorary president of the China Association for the Promotion of International Agricultural Cooperation, said that China's animal husbandry industry is currently in a transformation stage from "quantitative expansion" to "qualitative improvement". Animal welfare has become a must-answer issue in industrial upgrading and is also a passport for agricultural and food products to participate in international market competition. This year’s conference will release a number of livestock and poultry animal welfare standards to promote China-Africa agricultural cooperation from conference dialogue to project implementation.

This conference will set up an annual theme country mechanism, and set Botswana as the theme country for this year, creating a new window for exchanges in the agricultural and food fields between China and Africa. It will lay a solid foundation for cooperation between the two parties in subsequent joint research, technical training, two-way trade of agricultural products, and investment docking, and also open up a new channel for Pinggu Agriculture and Zhongguancun to connect with the African agricultural market.

The conference will include two thematic sessions: "Future Growth Space of the Sustainable Agriculture and Food Industry" and "Animal Welfare Products, Standards and Market Opportunities", as well as multiple interactive forums where experts from many countries will discuss topics such as international rules, market trends, and industrial practices. The released results cover standard development, certification promotion, project implementation and industrial cooperation, marking the accelerated formation of a complete chain of animal welfare and sustainable agriculture and food from concept to market.