While the local poultry sector continues to hold its own, Chief Executive Officer of the Barbados Agricultural Society (BAS), James Paul says there is room for further growth and expansion.
The CEO made the point recently to The Barbados Advocate as he maintained that there is export potential the sector is currently unable to capitalise on. His comments came as he indicated that he has been seeing a trend of more persons getting into poultry production, especially on a small scale.
“I find a lot of people are keeping smaller numbers of birds for their own purposes, so there is growth coming about in the industry and we continue to be able to satisfy the local market. Our goal now should be to try to get into other markets, but the challenge we face is getting into markets, especially outside of the Caribbean,” he said.
Paul added, “The reality we face is that the current legislative environment does not facilitate the export of poultry products to all markets. We cannot take advantage of external markets with the current legislation and this has to be looked at with the view of rectifying that problem.”
He went on to further note that the sector has faced this challenge for quite some time, and as such, he contended it has taken too long to get new legislation in place to assist the sector’s further development. The BAS official is suggesting that if those changes could be made, there will be even greater opportunities for the sector to benefit from going forward.
“We can export to some countries, but at present we cannot export to Europe because of our outdated legislation. It is holding up the development of the industry and is preventing us from having another source through which we can earn valuable foreign exchange. The fact is, unless your legislation is consistent with their legislation, export will not happen,” he stated.
Paul indicated that one of the challenges is that the Ministry of Health and not the Ministry of Agriculture has control over the slaughtering facilities in this country. He said while the Chief Medical Officer and the Chief Veterinary Officer work together, it is the former who has the responsibility under the legislation.
“There are legislative changes that are therefore required; because we can’t say they collaborate with each other and as a result we should be regarded as compliant. They want specifically to see the change in the legislation, because that is their standard. This issue has been going on for more than 20 years and the legislative drafters have just not responded to the concerns and this has prevented us from being able to export more locally produced meat products to the European Union,” he said.
He further noted that this deficit in the legislation also prevents the country from selling meat products to cruise ships that are based out of Europe. Referring to the country’s burgeoning cruise industry, he therefore emphasised the need to change the legislation in order to provide a wider opportunity for locally produced agricultural products, in particular meat products, to get into overseas markets. (JRT)