The Director-General of the Standards
Organisation of Nigeria (SON), Mr Joseph Odumodu, has advised poultry farmers
in the country to improve the quality of their products to meet acceptable
standards.

The DG gave the advice  in Abuja while declaring open a workshop on
“Mandatory Conformity Assessment Programme (MANCAP)’’ for poultry farmers in
FCT.

The workshop was organised in conjunction
with the Poultry Association of Nigeria (PAN).

Represented by Mr Daniel Agbanelo, the
Director of Technical Services, SON, 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.

Odumodu said: “Just as I started initially
with the talk on zero tolerance, we have been having some problems with
products from some particular countries.

“A team from SON is visiting some of these
countries to educate them on our policies-that we do not tolerate products
which are not fit for use.

“On our own parts, we need to ensure that
our products conform to international standards.”

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 him, 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.

The one-day workshop, which had more than
100 participants, was organised to promote the production of poultry in line
with Nigerian industrial standards.