FBD bemoan insanitary condition at slaughter house and poor meat handling

Story: Benjamin Xornam Glover, Bolgatanga The Upper East Regional Office of the Food and Drug Board, (FBD), has called for an intensification of efforts at monitoring the sanitation conditions and hygiene of slaughter house to prevent acts likely to be detrimental to public health. The call by the FBD, has come as s result of what the it says is the poor handling of meat products from the abattoirs to the meat shops for sale to consumers in the region, which it described as a major setback in terms of food safety. The Regional Director of the Food and Drugs Board, Mr. Eugene Addo who disclosed this at a forum on meat handling at Bolgatanga, Mr. Addo said the haphazard carting of meat products in rotten and rusty push trucks to meat stalls are great threats to public health. Participants at the forum included District Chief Executives, Presiding Members of District Assemblies, , Environmental Health Officers, Veterinary officers, Officials of Ministry of Food and Agriculture, butchers among others stakeholders. Mr. Addo reiterated the fact there is an urgent need to control the situation in order to ensure public health safety, cautioning that under PNDC Law305 (b), it is an offence for a person to sell, prepare, package, convey, store, or display for sale food under unsanitary conditions commits an offence. He also added that under the law food should be stored and conveyed in a manner that preserves its composition, quality and purity and minimise the dissipation of its nutritive properties from climate and other deteriorating condition. The Dean of Faculty of Agriculture at the Animal Science Department, of the University for Development, Professor Gabriel A. Teye, in a presentation said poor meat hygiene practices are common all over Ghana. According to him, most off the meat produced in Ghana is highly contaminated adding that the microbial loads on the meat are higher than the accepted limits. He said the situation has gotten so alarming that consumers do not even prefer the locally processed meats. Another observation he made was that about 80 per cent of those involved in the processing of meat have no formal education hence the resultant unhygienic practices in the handling of the product. Dr. Tei noted that butchers are essential components of both the livestock and food production chain and therefore must be educated on good hygienic standards of meat production. He said apart from constructing new abattoirs in regional capitals and district capitals, there is the urgent need to provide other facilities ideal for the business such as meat vans solely for the purpose of conveying meat products, to improve the hygienic standards of meat production. Additionally, he said rules governing meat production and handling of the products must be enforced by appropriate agencies while graduates from the country’s universities who have specialised in meat processing must be encouraged to go into the production and processing of meat as a means of ensuring food safety. A participant, Madam Veronica Agana of the Environmental Health and Sanitation Unit in the Bolgatanga Municipality cited inadequate personnel and logistics as a major constraint to the effective enforcement and monitoring of the relevant health regulation on the ground. She therefore called on the municipal and district assemblies’s to resourced personnel assign to ensure the safety of meat to improve upon sanitation and other related health concerns at the slaughter houses. -End- July 23, 2012