Steve Agbota
Despite the ban placed on importation of frozen poultry products across the land borders, Nigeria still spending about $3 billion annually on imported frozen meat.
In the last few years, local production of poultry products has been expanded across the country, as many Nigerians now involved in the value chain process of the products.
Presently, the local production of the product has moved from 15 per cent to 30 to 35 per cent as a result large production across the country, while up to 70 per were foreign-sourced majorly from Benin Republic.
Today, Nigeria’s annual demand for the poultry value chain is over N500 billion while 165 million birds, 650,000 metric tonnes of eggs and 290,000 metric tonnes of meat were demanded annually.
Due to the current mass production, there are a lot of chickens now locally processed in the markets and in every big shopping mall across the country today. However, consumers who spoke with Daily Sun lamented that the local chickens are too soft, compared to the imported chickens that are most solid and hard.
The consumers also said that Nigeria does not process Turkey, which fuel the smuggling of the product. They said farmers are producing Turkey but nobody doing the slaughtering and processing in the country.
Mrs. Ibukun Ajegunle said that are lot of chickens well processed in the market, but the issue now is that the meat is too soft compared to chicken ‘Orobo’ being imported.
She added: “We have turkey and is very expensive. One live Turkey is selling for as higher as N30, 000, which is why people resorted to importation because we don’t process Turkey in Nigeria.”
Speaking on the softness of the locally processed chickens, Director General of Poultry Association of Nigeria (PAN), Dr. Onalo Akpa, said the complaints on the meat being soft depends on the nature of the birds that are being raised.
He explained: “It is a matter of science from genetic to feeding system. Now we have the local chickens. In exotic chickens, there are two types; we have the layers and broilers. Other than that, we have what we called the breeders. The breeders are the ones that produce the day old chicks that produce fertile eggs”…