Over 1.2m metric tons of poultry products smuggled into Nigeria annually

The PAN national president, Dr. Ayoola Oduntan, gave the figure at the 2015 edition of the association’s annual national poultry summit in Lagos on Tuesday.He said the smuggled products which are majorly frozen chickens and turkey have great health impact on the wellbeing of Nigerians.He explained that the smuggled poultry products usually stayed long in […]

The PAN national president, Dr. Ayoola Oduntan, gave the figure at the 2015 edition of the association’s annual national poultry summit in Lagos on Tuesday.
He said the smuggled products which are majorly frozen chickens and turkey have great health impact on the wellbeing of Nigerians.
He explained that the smuggled poultry products usually stayed long in storage and transition before getting to the market.
Oduntan said that investigations have proven that the chicken is stored with carcinogenic chemicals and gets exposed to heavy bacteria due to broken cold chain.
He said: “Nigeria cannot continue to be a subtle dumping ground for all kinds of poultry and poultry products. Considering the level of unemployment in this country, government must do everything it can to reopen closed farms, create employment and develop the industry rather than wasting valuable fore and causing human and financial losses from diseases.”
He disclosed that the annual per capita consumption of chicken in Nigeria is 2.2 kilogrammes which stands at 8.8 kilogrammes with smuggled frozen poultry products.
The PAN president who lamented that this consumption volume costs the country an annual $2.75 billion loss to the industry.
He said if only 30 per cent of the smuggled segment is retained in the sector, the Nigerian poultry industry will be sustainable.
Oduntan also warned that the poultry industry is further threatened by the negative effects of the Economic Partnership Agreements signed by the ECOWAS leaders in July 2014 at Accra, Ghana as well as the introduction of the common external tariffs.
He said the objective of the summit is to chart a clear agenda that poultry farmers can present to the incoming government.