-says Agriculture ministry official
August 2, 2016 By Ibrahim Tarawallie
The Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Food Security and some civil society organisations over the weekend joined Sierra Akker Food Processing Company to promote the consumption of locally processed and packaged chicken. The exercise was carried out in all major markets in Freetown.
During the exercise, the ministry’s Public Relations Officer, Abu Bakarr Daramy, stated that locally produced chicken is highly nutritious for consumption.
According to him, many people prefer local chicken because most imported chicken have chemicals that might pose adverse health risks.
“Our locally produced chicken is fresh and cannot easily expire,” he said, as he spoke about the ministry’s’ commitment to bringing in more investors to flood the market with locally produced foodstuff in order to create a healthier environment.
The company’s chief executive officer, Pakai Kamara, noted that they have the facility to ensure the processing of locally produced chicken and those of their customers’ poultry farms.
“We have the only feed mill in the country and with that, we can mix our food, including concentrates, enough to make a complete mill. We have various case studies on feed mixtures alone due to the fact that Chicken breeds differ, the ingredient must be right to enable the chicken to produce the right sizes of eggs,” he said.
He said because they are maintaining high standards in what they do, such has allowed them to stand out above the rest in the business, adding that their customer base was growing exponentially.
While assuring of the company’s determination to continue in the breeding and processing of chicken, cattle and other poultry products, Mr. Kamara said the chicken plant has the capacity to produce 2000 chicken an hour and 50 cattle a day for the big plant.
Alphonso Manley of the Civil Rights Coalition noted that since the incident at one of the city’s dumpsites when scores of people scrabbled to lay hands on cartoons of expired chicken, most consumers have no desire in consuming chicken.
“We want everybody to know that Sierra Akker Chicken is safe and readily available. People should begin to go in for local food stuffs for a safer health,” he said.
Sierra Leone, Manley said, should not be a dumping ground for rotten and expired products that have taken months on the high sea and that the consumption of locally produced chicken would help promote local producers and the economy.
“Chickens need very good food and very safe clean drinking water. This will make them grow to very healthy and mature birds,” he added.