Laws To Regulate Feed And Hatchery Businesses

The laws will cover the country's score of feed producers and importers, who very often sell sub-standard and adulterated fish and animal feeds, exposing millions of people to deadly diseases like cancer, said Md Sharful Alam, secretary of Ministry of Fisheries and Livestock at a workshop in Dhaka.

"To stop the toxic antibiotics from getting into the food chains, and control the fish and animal feed manufacturering, registration is a must," Muhammed Shamsul Kibria said in his keynote paper in the workshop on "Compliance with International Food Safety Requirements: Lessons from Thai Experience."

Farms, feed manufacturing factories including landing/auction centres, depots, processing and export units should be registered and brought under a licensing system, Kibria said.

Presently, the local feed manufacturers and suppliers are not registered and they require no licence. Due to lack of law, some of them get away with selling poor quality feed, chemicals and antibiotics in the market. Farmers also use the contaminated feed and antibiotics to fatten domestic animals and in shrimp farming in ponds or low-lying lands, he said. Processing plants might introduce a self-checking method before collection and export of raw materials, or send those for further testing, he added.

He also described the curative and preventive measures taken by the Thai government, and scopes and potential areas of collaboration between the two countries in this regard.

The speakers in the workshop recommended import of feed and feed ingredients, free from nitrofuran, chloramphenicol etc, from abroad and test those before marketing or use for producing feed.

All feed and feed ingredients should be sealed and packed with labels mentioning date of manufacturing, date of expiry, composition list and other necessary information, they added.

Paiboon Ponsuwanna, chairman of Thai National Shippers' Council, Abdul Khaleq, director general of Department of Fisheries, Musa Meah, president of Bangladesh Frozen Foods Exporters Association, among others, spoke on the occasion.