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Contact:
Claudia Monlouis
Thursday, June 21, 2007 – The Veterinary and Livestock Services Division
of the Ministry of Agriculture recently conducted training workshops for pig
farmers, with the objective of assisting them to better manage their units.
Chief Veterinary Officer Dr. George Joseph said the Ministry hopes to develop a
cadre of certified pork producers ahead of the soon to be constructed national
abattoir.
“At the end of the day, what we aspire to achieve is when a farmer is certified
there is a certain level of guarantee that you know what is coming out of that
farm - that it meets a certain standards. By so doing when this animal gets into
the abattoir certain aspects “Hazard Analysis Critical Control Points” - HACCP –
(a body of standards related to the agro-industry) would have been addressed so
you would have less critical points to address in the abattoir.”
The state currently provides 40% protection for locally produced pork. However
Chairman of the newly formed Livestock Development Committee Mr. Horace Walters
with the anticipated transformation of the industry, livestock farmers envisage
an opportunity to occupy and supply a bigger share of the local market.
“With the kind of money that we are spending on livestock products we could
strike a serious note in cutting back on a high import bill. In fact if we just
look at the pig and pork industry where we have a $20,000.000.00 import bill,
you could just understand what it would mean to farmers if we are able to cut
this by half, by fifty percent . It would mean a lot of hard currency savings,
it would mean a lot of income to the farmers and we want to extend that to all
other farmers of the livestock community .”
Participants of the workshops were at the end, presented with certificates which
recognise them as certified swine producers.
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