Catfish Group tightens feed quality control

The committee is expected to make recommendations, to be enforced by
government, on how to stop the importation of expired fishfeed into the
country.

Chairman of the committee, Dr. Samuel Talabi, said that a list
of feeds will be produced, which will be recognised by Cafan as accredited
brands of fish feed.

Cafan president, Chief Tayo Akingbolagun, said the
committee became necessary, given the volume of foul feed circulating within the
industry.

Banning sub standard feeds
Akingbolagun’s prime
effort will be to outright ban importation of sub-standard feed or feed which
use-by-date is expired on arrival.

“The lifespan of most feed should not
be more than six months. But the situation is usually that the feeds would have
spent more time in the manufacturers’ stores overseas before they export them to
Africa after failing to sell them in their country”, he said.

What
happens is that importers clean up the batch numbers and expiration dates with
new numbers and dates.

Dumping ground
“This initiative will
strive to stop the trend of using our country as a dumping ground,” Akingbolagun
stressed.

The committee, among other terms, is to propose how fish feed
should be packaged and labelled to indicate their composition, batch numbers,
expiry and manufacture dates.

Another task will be to set up a procedure
for fish feed evaluation in order to ascertain suitability, quality and price in
the Nigerian market.