Agric Minister orders closure of cold rooms with rotten fish in Lagos

Agric Minister orders closure of cold rooms with rotten fish in Lagos

Tue, Mar 25, 2014

The Honourable Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, Dr. Akinwumi Adesina, CON, has ordered the immediate shutdown of all cold rooms found to be stockpiling expired or unwholesome fish in the country.

The Minister gave the directive on 25 March 2014 in Lagos, shortly after inspecting a number of cold storage facilities being operated by major fish importers. During the inspection, many of the importers/operators of the cold rooms abandoned their facilities, leaving behind only supervisors and menial workers, who were in no position to give material information on the products held in the facilities.

 

Against that background, the Minister directed acting director of fisheries in the Ministry, Mrs Foluke Areola, to mobilise officials to all facilities in order to undertake a physical count of all such facilities, as well as conduct laboratory tests on products found in them, to ascertain whether or not they were safe for human consumption.

                                            

Based on that directive, preliminary assessments indicated that there are about 42 companieswith cold storage facilities stocking fish and fish product in the Lagos area. These facilities have varying numbers of cold storage chains, with storage capacities ranging from 500 to 3000 20-kilogramme cartons of fish. The preliminary assessment also revealed that a single cold room belonging to one company with 7 subsidiary contained 2290 cartons of unwholesome fish, while another had 256 cartons of expired fish and 581 cartons of unwholesome fish.

 

A Comprehensive report from teams detailed by the Minister to undertake full-scale field assessment of fish storage facilities in the Lagos area is being awaited, including the laboratory assessments to determine the wholesomeness of the fish and products in stock.

 

It would be recalled that during the 2nd Stakeholder’s Interactive Session on Re-Positioning of the Fisheries Sectorheld on Wednesday, 23 February 2014at Transcorp Hilton Hotel, Abuja, fish and fishery product retailers complained bitterly of sharp business practices by big fish importers, including dumping of unwholesome and expired fish productson the Nigerian market, as well as delving into retailing, which they claimed the importers’ licenses prohibit them from. The retailers further argued that in the process, the importers have virtually taken away their businesses while asking for government’s protection of their businesses by insisting that all investors in the fisheries sector abided by laid down rules.

 

On that occasion, Honourable Minister, Dr. Adesina, stated that “Nigerians are daily being misinformed through well-orchestrated media by these fishy business perpetrators.”​Invoking the powers conferred on him as the Minister by Section 15 of the Sea Fisheries Act, Adesina said he had issued new regulations to clean up the abuse in which Nigeria was being used as a dumping ground for unwholesome frozen fish, in addition to serious trade malpractices associated with frozen fish importation into the country. He said that henceforth, all illegally imported fish will be confiscated and destroyed.

 

Adesina also stated that with “the total demand for fish in the country is 2.7 million metric tons, and local production at about 800,000 metric tons, the deficit of 1.9 million metric tons was being met by imports. “Our goal”, he said,“is to be self-sufficient in fish production. We will achieve this by promoting greater investments in aquaculture, improving artisanal, inland and marine fisheries. Our four-year target is to increase the production of fish fingerlings by 1.25 billion per year, the production of fish feed by 400,000 metric tons per year; and increase table size fish production by an additional 250,000 metric tons per year.