Regulating Survival

Publishing date: 01 February 2026

Published in: The Nation

The inauguration of the Punjab Agriculture, Food and Drug Authority (PAFDA) by Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and Chief Minister Maryam Nawaz marks a welcome, if overdue, advancement in Pakistan’s regulatory landscape. At a time when too many public institutions are content with bureaucratic inertia, the operationalisation of a dedicated authority to oversee food safety, agricultural inputs, and pharmaceuticals deserves recognition.

Entrusting a single, scientifically anchored body with the testing and certification of essential goods acknowledges that food security is not a matter of profits and slogans but of systems and standards. Public health, export competitiveness, and consumer confidence rest on such foundations; without them, markets become fertile ground for adulteration and speculation. The establishment of PAFDA underscores the seriousness with which regulatory oversight must be applied if Pakistan is to shed its chronic dependence on external laboratories and patch-work responses to quality crises.

Food security ought not to be a buzzword confined to election manifests. A nation capable of producing but incapable of verifying the safety and integrity of what it eats consigns its people to vulnerability — and its farmers to marginalisation. A robust, transparent framework for testing fertilisers, pesticides, drugs, and foodstuffs strengthens local supply chains, reduces foreign exchange leakage, and enhances export potential. In a world where climate change is reshaping agricultural risk and global supply chains are increasingly strained, such institutional resilience is indispensable.

Beyond its immediate technical remit, PAFDA represents a step towards self-reliance. In an era where narratives about Pakistan’s productivity and rule of law are too often shaped abroad, building credible domestic institutions is itself a form of soft power — and a bulwark against the misinformation and external propaganda that thrive in the absence of authority and accountability.