Addressing Biosafety In Poultry Farming

Representatives of national sanitary committees in Benin, Burkina Faso, Mali, Ghana, Togo, Nigeria, and Senegal recently met in Lagos, southwest Nigeria to discuss the implementation of biosafety standards in West Africa for  the production of day-old-chicks, DOCs and eggs-to-hatch, ETHs —important inputs in poultry production.

The meeting was jointly organised by the Poultry Association of Nigeria, PAN, and the Union des Organisations de la Filière Avicole des pays de l’Afrique de l’Ouest (UOFA-AO), and financed by the United States Agency for International Development, USAID’s Expanded Agribusiness and Trade Promotion (USAID E-ATP) project.

DOCs and ETHs are regionally traded, and therefore, of key importance in efforts to prevent avian influenza and other poultry diseases in the region. Regional coordination of preventive measures is needed, moreover, to ensure the continuity of trade in poultry products in the face of bio-safety threats to poultry products.

The two-day meeting facilitated this process by providing national sanitary committees the opportunity to meet for a third time to review lessons learnt, discuss monitoring of compliance, and develop detailed action plans.

Experts were of the view that improving bio-security through best practices in poultry production is a priority of West African governments and poultry operators, and one that had received heightened attention since the 2007 avian influenza outbreak.

In response, the USAID E-ATP project has, since 2010, been assisting West African national veterinary services and poultry producers to better manage avian influenza risk. Its focus has been on the adoption of international standards and a health monitoring programme. In 2011, for instance, the project trained 14 auditors from Benin, Burkina Faso, Mali, Ghana, Togo, Nigeria, and Senegal on the conduct of audits in poultry breeding operations and hatcheries.

At the national level, the project has helped to establish sanitary committees to certify the status of poultry farms and hatcheries with respect to international bio-safety standards. In a September 2011 workshop, representatives of the national sanitary committees committed to producing DOCs and ETHs according to these standards.

According to USAID’s release, the project, subsequently funded audits of poultry farms in Benin, Burkina Faso, Mali, and Togo, adding that a workshop in February 2012, under the leadership of UOFA AO and PAN, reviewed the process and results of these audits.

USAID’s Agribusiness and Trade Promotion (ATP) and Expanded Agribusiness and Trade Promotion (E-ATP) projects are regional initiatives which aim to increase the value and volume of intra-regional West African trade in key agricultural value chains including livestock, maize/cereals, and onion/shallot.

The projects are currently active in Benin, Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, Mali, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, and Togo. An important objective of the E-ATP project is to enhance the capacity of private poultry operators and the animal health sector to reduce the risk of avian influenza outbreaks and transmission.

At the event, Country Representative, USAID, Sussane Ngo-Eyok said: “What we’ve been doing since 2010 is working with hatcheries, lab and veterinary services in eight West African countries; Senegal, Mali, Burkina Faso, Togo, Benin, Nigeria and Cote d Iviore in order to find a solution to regional trade.

“Since the Avian Influenza outbreak in 2007, three countries have put in precautionary measures to prevent the spread of the disease, now that Avian Influenza has kind of disappeared in so many countries, those restrictions are still in place and the argument used is bio-safety, there is nothing that can tell us that the outbreak will not come back because we are working on trade; that’s what our organisation is doing. A six value chain, one of them, we said let’s look at lab services and veterinary services and operators themselves, how we can address the issue; that’s why we are sponsoring this kind of initiative.

“So in 2010, we had all the lab services and veterinary services working together, we brought them all together with key operators in order to look at what we can do, the operators, the lab services and vet services of all those countries that have come together and designed a charter which is a kind of sanitary code of conduct for hatchery operators and we have two auditors per country who visit on inspections to see how key operators obey and what they need to do better in order to respect those standards, just to open trust among operations.”

She said at the moment, Nigeria is at an advantage “because nothing comes in and in other countries, people prefer ordering Day Old Chicks (DOC); even in Benin, they have their DOC coming from Belgium; even eggs to hatch their hatcheries coming from Belgium, Netherlands and Brazil, when they could come and get them from Nigeria.

“If you are in Ghana, you can get them to Benin or if in Senegal. Senegal was not actually affected by the outbreak of 2007 out of the other countries, so they could supply Mali, but because of those standard issues and mistrust between operators from one country to the other, there is no really far more certification coming to all the countries.”

That’s why USAID has decided to support that initiative to bring all the regional stakeholders together and reintroduce trust to find a solution and find a way to open the way for trade in West Africa.”

On the challenges, Ngo-Eyok said in the Economic Community of West African States, ECOWAS, rule, certificates should be recognised from one country to the other, “but that is not the case, so that’s why we are coming together to change that rule. You come from Togo and you’re going to Benin, its only 40 kilometres, in that journey, four of five people would have asked for that certificate and you will lose two hours at each border; but normally, under ECOWAS rule, one certificate should cover you from Senegal all the way to Nigeria.

“This is one of the constrains —no harmonization of certificate. The second one is for the self declaration of countries to be Avian Influenza free. The AIE has put in place measures for countries to declare themselves free of Avian Influenza. It involves abiding to certain rules and production standards.”

On USAID’s achievement, Ngo-Eyok said, “for example, between Burkina Faso and Senegal, before the war last year, the trade has resumed, Togo is still under ministerial agreement, now it’s legally importing from Ghana and to Benin, so there has been some improvement because now, you can legally sort out your supply of DOC from neighbouring countries.

“What we are hoping to see is that Benin would be able to buy from Nigeria in future and also that Togo will have double supply and from Ghana and from Nigeria, and that Senegal will be able to cover Mali and Burkina Faso and that we would find a way.”

Speaking at the regional workshop, the National Secretary of Poultry Association of Nigeria, PAN, John Oladero said the farmers had taken the necessary steps to ensure the bird flu problem was nipped in the bud. He said the need to solve the problems informed the initiative of USAID of bringing poultry farmers in the sub-region together to ruminate on how to tackle the bird flu outbreak, which he said had before now created trans-border barrier in the marketing of poultry farm products.

Oladero said the integration could boost investment in the sector, urging the farmers to take advantage of the platform created the integration. He added that Nigeria, with over 160 million people would soon be a reference point in agricultural development in this part of the world, adding that embracing such step would help to boost the country’s human capital development indices.

The PAN scribe commended USAID for bringing the farmers in the region together in order to break barriers and galvanize the industry despite the challenges, adding that the country would be better off when it got more serious with agriculture.

 —Kazeem Ugbodaga