Wholesalers and retailers of local poultry products in Accra have threatened to boycott the local chicken products from Ghana Broiler Project (GHABROP).

They criticized what they claimed as “poor packaging, branding and inconsistency” of the GHABROP chicken products.

According to the dealers, the chicken products from GHABROP had no production and expiry dates on them as required by law.

The local poultry traders expressed their frustration in an investigation carried out by the Ghana News Agency (GNA) as to why Ghanaians were not patronizing the local poultry products of GHABROP.

The poultry dealers complained that, the boxes used in packing the products of GHABROP are inferior and easily gets torn exposing the products.

Mr Bernard Buckman, a dealer in poultry products, said the durability of the boxes and its attractiveness instills confidence in customers and reassures them that, they were buying healthy products for consumption.

“The quality of the product has to be communicated by good packaging and not just by promises of quality made in the text on the packaging,” he said.

Mr Buckman called on the Ministry of Agriculture and the Ghana Standards Authority to step in and ensure that, GHABROP adhere to standards and quality packaging to attract more Ghanaians to patronize their products.

That he said would help improve the country’s Gross Domestic Products (GDP).

When Mr Kojo Blankson Wilson, the Director of Operations at GHABROP was contacted , he said, the project wholeheartedly appreciates the concerns of the dealers and had initiated action to solve those concerns.

He said, the project is an infant project in Ghana which needs to be encouraged to boost consumption of made-in-Ghana products than to be “flogged”.

“This is just the first phase of the project and we have learnt a lot of lessons and we assure our valued stakeholders that in the second phase, which is starting soon, our products will meet the international quality standards,” he said.

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.

The project was also aimed at developing the poultry industry along the poultry value chain and to ensure that production farms, input suppliers, hatcheries, feed mills, veterinary service producers, processors, marketers/cold stores and consumers all play their roles to ensure self-sufficiency.

It was an initiative of the Government of Ghana through the Ministry of Food and Agriculture (MOFA) in collaboration with the Ghana National Association of Poultry Farmers (GNAPF) and would run for 10 years.

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.