Mr Henry Ekow Manly-Spain, a businessman and importer of chicken products, has expressed worry about bad packaging of the Ghana Broiler Revitalisation Project (GHABROP) chicken products and appealed to the Food and Drugs Authority to step in.

He said the Ministry of Food and Agricultural could not “blackmail” poultry products dealers into buying GHABROP chicken products which had no production and expiry dates on them as required by law.

“I embrace the policy to help local poultry industry but its implementation is in bad taste so far as the product is concerned,” he told the GNA in an interview.

Mr Manly-Spain said some importers were going out of business because they had been refused permits to clear their goods at the port “for reason that they would not buy the 40 percent of GHABROP chicken which fall below packaging and branding standards.”

He said as an importer of chicken, he was ever ready to buy the products if they packaged them well and did the necessary things to meet standards.

Mr Manly-Spain appealed to the FDA to step in and ensure that GHABROP adhered to standards and quality packaging to attract more Ghanaians to patronize the Made-in-Ghana products.

Mr Kojo Blankson Wilson, the Director of Operations at GHABROP, said chicken dealers should expect international quality standards products in the second phase of the Project since management had rectified all anomalies.

He said GHABROP needed to be encouraged to boost consumption of Made-in-Ghana products than to be vilified.

The GHABROP was launched in July 2014 by the government to boost local capacity in the production, processing and marketing of chicken products in Ghana.

It is aimed at developing the poultry industry and to ensure that all stakeholders, including consumers, play their roles to ensure self-sufficiency.

The target of the project is to produce 30,000 metric tonnes of broiler meat with an expected increase to 60,000 metric tonnes to progressively reduce Ghana’s meat import burden by 40 per cent by 2016.