The Nigeria Institute of Animal Science (NIAS) says it is deploying technology to mitigate the influx of unqualified persons into the livestock subsector in the South-South zone of the institute.
Eustace Iyayi, the registrar of the institute, who disclosed this, weekend, during a South-South zone II stakeholders’ town hall meeting in Benin City, said deploying technology has become imperative because of the rising level of quackery in the animal husbandry value chain.
Iyayi lamented that fake professionals have continued to hamper efforts by qualified persons in the livestock subsector, thereby posing threats to their businesses.
“Quackery has affected businesses in the sector because people who are doing it right are losing money steadily. What we have resolved to do is to try as much as possible to eliminate quackery in the livestock sector with coding and tracking devices.
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“We have started it with the poultry value chain, where we are now deploying technology to ensure that the day-old chicks value chain are sanitised. We discovered that people just hatch eggs of low quality and put them in cartons of well-known hatcheries, then sell them as products of those known hatcheries.
“We have worked with a technological company to produce a tracking and coding device which has been launched. This device is going to be deployed to mark cartons and we will be able to track and trace the hatcheries to know where they are coming from.
“The coded cartons are not going to be made available to quacks. So, we can easily differentiate between the original and fake hatcheries”, Iyayi said.
The registrar, however, noted that the town hall meeting was geared towards identifying problems facing the growth of the sector with a view to proffering solutions to them.
