Accra, Aug.3, GNA - Mr John Odame-Darkwa, Deputy Chief Executive of the Food and drugs Board(FDB) in-charge of Food Safety on Wednesday said the Board would soon start licensing Cold storage facilities to make them compliant to safety standards.

He said, “This comes on the heels of a review inspection report on compliance by cold storage facilities which revealed that majority of the cold stores in Accra and Tema metropolis were non-compliant and operating under unhygienic conditions, which were very dangerous and could cause health hazards to consumers”.

Speaking at the opening of a two-day training workshop for cold store operators in the Accra, Mr Odame-Darkwa noted that in the next three months operators would be trained and encouraged to put in the appropriate measures or have their facilities closed down.

He said due to the perishable nature of animal products such poultry, meat and fish, it was necessary that before they got to the consumer, the cold chain integrity was properly maintained to safeguard their quality and safety as they were being transported and that was exactly what the FDB sought to achieve.

“The FDB would ensure that the desired attention was given to the high-risk activity in the food supply chain to safeguard public health and safety”, he added.

Dr Mohammed M. Alfa, Head of the Animal products and Biosafety Department of FDB, said the training workshop will afford operators an opportunity to learn about good cold storage practices for improved service delivery and safe products.

He said the Board detected that most of the 150 cold stores visited operated under poor sanitary conditions, poor arrangement of products, poor maintenance of packaging integrity, repackage under unhygienic conditions and use of inappropriate means to transport animal products.

Dr Alfa said most of the cold stores visited did not have temperature-monitoring devices to keep the products at the appropriate temperature and those which had were out of order.

The environment under which fish and poultry products were repackaged outside the refrigerator exposed the products to chemical and toxin contaminations harmful to human health, he said.

Dr Alfa noted that majority of the cold stores inspected did not have toilet facilities, which gave the impression that workers at the cold stores used toilet facilities elsewhere. "What is the guarantee that they will wash their hands with soap before holding the fish and other poultry products?"

He explained that FDB would soon come out with a prescription to ensure that cold store facilities had a standby functional generator with the right capacity to prevent a break in the chain process whenever there was power outrage.

"We do not take pride in destroying products, neither are we out to collapse businesses. We are here to support operators and to ensure that you maximize profit through good storage practices while ensuring public health and safety."

The Board will continue dialoguing with operators until they were satisfied with compliance levels of operations, he said, and urged operators to, as part of what they would be learning, share experiences to gain maximum benefit from the two-day training.