Poultry Development Board calls for law to back its establishment

The Poultry Development Board on Tuesday called on the government to enact a law to support its establishment to enable it effectively carry out its mandate for the growth of the poultry industry.
In a speech read on his behalf at Wa, Reverend Dr Kwabena Darko, Chairman of the Board, said they held the view that legislation ought to have been in place three years after the Board's inauguration by President John Agyekum Kufuor.
This call was made at a meeting some members of the Board held with poultry farmers and some stakeholders in the poultry industry in the Upper West Region to formally introduce members of the Board to them.
They also discussed the challenges facing the industry and appealed to poultry farmers in the region to go into commercial production of guinea fowls.
Rev Dr Darko said poultry farmers were guilty of not adhering to bio security measures and therefore asked them to take the issue of bio security on farms very seriously since that was the only way they could prevent the incidence of bird flu and other diseases.
Mr Maurice Dery, the Regional Chairman of the Ghana National Association of Poultry Farmers, said there were 15 commercial poultry farms in the region mostly located in the Wa Municipality with farm stock holdings ranging between 300 birds to 5,000 birds.
He said marketing of poultry and poultry products were serious challenges to commercial poultry farmers in the region and saw the low-income levels and stiff competition from locally raised poultry as the causes of those problems.