GLDA’s $14M animal traceability initiative moving apace 

The Guyana Livestock Development Authority (GLDA) is initiating a $14 million animal traceability system to ensure that animals bred for meat are reared in suitable conditions to produce quality meat.

Minister of Agriculture, Zulfikar Mustapha said the sum has been allocated in Budget 2021 for the system, which is fundamental to ensuring food safety standards and farm certification, and would lead to increased exports.

During a recent interview with DPI, GLDA’s Chief Executive Officer, Dr. Grayson Halley said the country’s porous borders make surveillance challenging. Works are ongoing to develop the traceability system, and the Government has already procured one of three vehicles to intensify surveillance.

Dr. Halley said over time, surveillance would be done at Moleson Creek, Bartica, the wharves within Georgetown, and the Eugene F. Correia and Cheddi Jagan International airports. The traceability system would also help ensure farms are operated in accordance with the GLDA regulations, and the animals are kept in sanitary conditions. “We can’t have a farmer sending animals to the processing facility and he or she is feeding any kind of scrap to the animal and we don’t know where the feed is coming from and what is the quality,” Dr. Halley said.

To this end, he said, each animal would be tagged to allow faster identification, should there be a need for an investigation. This approach would also make it easier to trace the lineage of the meat.

“We will know which farm the meat is coming from and which Region the product is coming from. We must know even the parent of the animal and its generation, so at each point we know the animal’s history,” the CEO explained. Dr. Halley said the Food Safety Authority would play a key role in this process to ensure the meat produced after slaughter is wholesome for human consumption, and is not contaminated during the course of slaughtering.

“The idea is when we supply those animals to the slaughter facilities with our ID, we know everything that happened before. The Food Safety Authority will then install their barcode on the product that is coming from that individual animal, so those barcodes will make reference to the animal and could trace back to the farm,” he added. On two recent occasions, the GLDA was able to seize large quantities of imported, undocumented and expired meat products from businesses in the city. The seizures were done following a massive scrutinising outreach by the GLDA, a mere three months after the PPP/C Government took office.