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TIRDO sensitizes tea farmers on quality improvement
2005-12-14 08:25:01
By Guardain Reporter
Four experts from the Tanzania Industrial Research and Development Organization and from the Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security (MAFS) have for the past two weeks been educating farmers and processors of tea and coffee in Iringa, Mbeya and Ruvuma regions on traceability requirements as a precondition to penetrate the European, Asian and the United States markets.
The co-ordinator of the project, Dr. Ludovick Manege, has said the experts were led by the Director General of TIRDO, Col. Dr. A.P. Nanyaro.
Dr. Manege said the team sensitized tea growers and processors in Mwakareli, Segera, and Rungwe tea schemes in Rungwe District, Mbeya Region.
The schemes are managed by the Rungwe Small Tea Growers Association (RSTGA).
He said the farmers and processors were sensitized on why it was important to implement traceability that would lead to improved quality of their tea and hence get market access to European Union, the United States of America and Japan.
Dr Manege said that the team also visited Wakulima Tea Company (WATCO) which is jointly owned by Rungwe Small Tea Growers Association and TATEPA that also participated during the sensitization seminars.
He noted that companies that have already started to implement the Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point (HACCP) had been laying a ground to implement traceability as a second step to improve the quality of their products.
Dr. Manege said that his team also visited Mufindi Tea Company, Unilever and Kibena tea factory to sensitize processors on traceability conditions of penetrating the EU market.
The team also conducted workshops on traceability for Mbinga coffee farmers.
He said that the project had made good progress because coffee farmers in Kilimanjaro and Arusha Regions had, in collaboration with TIRDO and MAFS, completed standard forms that would be used to implement traceability.
Dr. Manege said that the message for processors, transporters, farmers, shippers and those who are in the food supply chain was to keep records that would be retrieved within a short time if food that had been exported was found to have problems or was defective.
He said traceability, or as it commonly called ’from farm to fork’ was the ability to trace and follow food, feed, food producing animal or substance intended to be incorporated into food or feed in all stages of production, processing transportation and distribution.
Dr. Manege said that should a particular batch of food be found defective it should be easy to trace from the consumer to the factory or farmers.
There should not be a gap of information as it might happen if for example one of the operators failed to keep records.
’If the cause of the problem is identified it is only that particular batch which will be withdrawn or recalled from the retailers or shops and other producers of the product which has been exported to Europe will not be affected,’ he said.
Dr. Manege said that traceability was fueled by concerns from the consumers.
He noted that the European consumers had become increasingly concerned with the safety of food and negative effects of bio-industrial production.
’This concern has been strengthened by several sector-wide crises in he last decade and governments have responded by imposing new legislation,’ he said.
Speaking on the challenge of traceability, Dr. Manege said that as of last January, traceability had been a legal obligation in the European food sector and noted that Regulation (EC) No. 178/2002 defines traceability as the ability to trace and follow food, feed, food producing animal, or substance intended to be or expected to be incorporated into food or feed in all stages of production, processing, transportation and distribution.
Dr. Manege said that in practice this required all food and feed business operators to have systems in place to identify from whom they had received a food or feed and to whom they had sold a food or feed in what was called in traceability ’one step back and one step forward.’
European and Asian countries met three years ago to develop what was called European and Asian Nations Uniform Council Code or in short EAN-UCC which is synchronized to traceability for identification of products.
’In essence, under the EAN-UCC all products will have to bear a bar code which will have many details about the product, ingredients, country of origin, expiry date, production date, company and other details which will describe all unique features of the product,’ he said.
Dr. Manege said that after 11- September bomb attacks in US, a Bio-terrorism Act was enacted in 2002 which required all companies exporting food to USA to have traceability system within two years.
’All products must have a label showing the country of origin and should a problem arise information about the product that has been tampered with must be obtained within four hours,’ he said.
The fear was that acts of sabotage on food products might be done by terrorist and affect the lives of thousands of people who consumed that product.
Dr. Manege said: ’As a result of the need to implement traceability, the Government of Tanzania has received assistance from the Government of Denmark through its aid agency, DANIDA, under the Business Sector Programme Support II (BSPS II) to improve product quality to gain market access.’
He also said: ’The project BSPS II under the component ’market access’ with sub component ’Product Quality Improvement’ has four outputs which are: standarzidation, packaging, traceability and accreditation of laboratories.’
The project is being managed by the Ministry of Industry and Trade and TIRDO is implementing the traceability output.It is expected to last for the next two years.
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