Ho, Nov 19, GNA - Compliance with the Food and Drugs Board's (FDB) food quality assurance standards could raise the competitiveness of producers, raising them above the bottom line, Mr Roderic Daddey-Adjei, FDB Eastern and Volta Zone Manager, has said.

He was speaking to the Ghana News Agency on Thursday during a training seminar for small and medium scale food manufacturing companies in the Volta Region. Mr Daddey-Adjei said these industries, producing verifiably safe products, could combine with agricultural production to raise living standards in the rural areas. Participants were mainly sachet water and packaged food and beverages producers.

Mr Daddey-Adjei said the FDB was following a strict regimen of checks for the producers and facilities of those not up to the standard would be closed down.

He said about 80 sachet water producing companies had met the standards, while many were going through the registration process and at various levels of compliance.

Mr Daddey-Osei said the FDB, through its yearly facility licensing programme, kept the registered companies on their toes because they could be asked to stop production on account of receding compliance levels. He said it had not been easy for the FDB to get producers to do the right thing and that closures and prosecutions had to be used to get some to comply with the rules.

Miss Charlotte Grant, Manageress of the Sarparlex Ventures, producers of sachet water, said the FDB training programmes had helped to increase the market value of her company's brands. Mr Patrick Osei, Regulatory Officer, took participants through dangers of improper handling of the foods in the production process. He said a single record of contamination of a product could lead to the serious performance problems of that brand for years. 18 Nov 10