Nigeria callls on its poultry farmers to improve quality
Poultry farmers in Nigeria have been called upon to improve the quality of their products during a workshop held in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), in a association with the Poultry Association of Nigeria.
Director-general of the Standards Organisation of Nigeria, Joseph Odumodu said that the “zero tolerance had been introduced to ensure that consumers get real value for their money”.
He said that the organisation was making frantic efforts to stop the inflow of substandard products into the Nigerian market, adding that Nigerian products must also meet acceptable standards.
According to him, the zero tolerance is a strategy to ensure that products brought into Nigeria are competitive, as Nigeria is signatory to the World Trade Organisation (WTO) agreement.
In a remark, Mrs Mujishola Kehinde, Head of the organisation in the FCT, said the programme was in tandem with the transformation agenda of the Federal Government to promote agriculture and poultry products.
Contributing, Dr Gidado Mohammed of the Federal Ministry of Agriculture, said the workshop was timely as agriculture was undergoing transformation in the country.
Mohammed said poultry was the most commercially viable sector in the agriculture sector, adding that the transformation began with outbreak of the avian influenza (bird flu) in 2006. “Every poultry owner of up to 200 birds has to be registered for easy monitoring; over 8,000 poultry outfits have been registered under the avian influenza monitoring scheme.”
According to Mohammed , efforts are underway to produce poultry feeds from cassava since maize is now very expensive. He said cassava farmers across the country had been trained on how to produce high-grade cassava for poultry feeds.
Source: Nigeria’s Leadership
