History
Among the environmental changes in which the scientists believe that will cause disasters by the new cross-boundaries diseases occurrent every year such as Avian Influenza, BSE, Nipah, and SARS. People in the world tend to seek the safety in food consumption, preservative environmental agriculture, and competition for commercial advantages and trade barriers referred to the scientific reasons. As the government has announced and campaigned the food safety and non-chemical productions, the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, Chiang Mai University has collaborated with the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, Freie Universitaet Berlin (FU-Berlin), Germany since 1999 to conduct activities regularly by researchers and experts from many countries. This aims to establish the regional centre status of the university in veterinary public health in which a multidisciplinary science. These are related to food of animal origin, the disaster prevention in zoonoses, and academic ability of the trade negotiation in the stage of the international trade, which refers to WTO-Sanitary and Phytosanitary Agreement (WTO-SPS's Agreement). The cooperation is aimed to reach the target of the project successfully respectively. As the result, Chiang Mai University has agreed with FU-Berlin to establish the Regional Centre for Veterinary Public Health in order to support the management and reach the goals of the project as the education center, which is certified by international organization effectively. Establishment of the joint international curriculum of the Master of Science course in Veterinary Public Health with FU-Berlin, the innovation project of Chiang Mai University , is one activity to support the project. The curriculum is aimed to produce and develop human resources particular in Veterinary Public Health to response needs of food production and trade of animal origin of the countries in South East Asia and Greater Mae Kong Sub-Region.
The establishment of the Regional Centre status for Veterinary Public Health at Chiang Mai University is relevant to the vision of the government that want Thailand being as kitchen of the world. It is also relevant to the strategies of increasing the competition capacity of the country, reinforcing the sustainable development of the country, developing society, solving the poverty of the country, and improving life's quality of the government. In addition, these tie up the cooperation with the countries, which have economical influence in EU, which will promote the leadership status of Thailand in the region. This involves directly to the economical advantages of the country and also incomes of the farmers according to the export value in meat and marine products, which is over 200,000 million baht per year.
For establishing the joint degree program, FU-Berlin has submitted the project to apply for the operating budget from EU-Asia Link Programme in order to support the joint degree, which is one of the approved seventeen projects a of year 2003 from 120 projects. According to this support, the project has financial support in amount of 370,000 Euro from EU and FU-Berlin to run and launch the course for the first year student in time since October 1, 2003 . In addition, Charoen Pokkaphan's Foundation is a Thai private section that has supported 1 million baht for running this project and Thai government has a policy to support the budget for this project respectively.
In accordance with aims to establish the Regional Centre for Veterinary Public Health in multidisciplinary science that co-operate with other international institutes, the project need to seek the financial sources from international organization and in country to support the project. It is necessary to have the flexible management and system to run on and adjust on working with the collaborated institutions rapidly and effectively, which is different from Thai government's regulation. Therefore, it is agreed to establish the Regional Centre for Veterinary Public Health as an autonomous unit and run under the umbrella of CMU. in order to reach the project's purpose as the information center of the country and the people that positioned.
The grand opening ceremony was on October 9, 2003 at the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, Chiang Mai University by H.E. Mrs. Sudarat Keyuraphan, the Minister of Public Health as well as the director generals concerning in animal health from 17 countries in Asia Pacific and 50 international researchers.