Safe Food Fair Food – July 2012 update

Congratulations to Professor Tano-Debrah and his students in Ghana (SFFF1): Kennedy Bomfeh in Ghana was awarded his M.Phil. in Food Science in July 2012 and Joy Appiah has just submitted his thesis. The soft copies will soon be posted in our ILRI repository.

Ethiopia:

In July and early August, Dr Girma Zewde participated in two stakeholder meetings on the site selection for the shoat value chain in Ethiopia. Moreover, he has started to compile tools for the value chain assessment which is to be conducted late September/ early October 2012. Please find the related documents and more information in our Ethiopia wiki page.

Tanzania:

Two Master students will take part in the baselines surveys under More Milk in Tanzania project planned for August 2012. They will extract DNA samples and send them to ILRI for multiplex PCR analysis. They both plan to sample about 250 samples along the value chains. A draft report on successes and failures is underway and will be posted shortly in our Tanzania wiki page.

Uganda:

The team Uganda is in the process of a GPS mapping exercise to collect data on pork outlets in urban Kampala. In the past 2 weeks, we conducted a qualitative survey on pork hygiene at the only registered abattoir in Kampala. Many thanks to Katie Holmes, a second year vet student from the University of Wisconsin who supported the field work from July 23 – August 22! The value chain assessment will start in October, when the ILRI-Uganda team is complete and the sites are selected.

Mali:

We got the green light from BMZ for the go-ahead in Mali despite the political unrest in the region. Professor Bonfoh and his team are now in the process of planning the activities and recruiting a postgraduate student.

Egypt:

Our team West Africa (Prof. Bonfoh, Prof. Tano-Debrah, Kennedy Bomfeh and Sylvain Traoré) will be travelling to Egypt in October to conduct a rapid assessment of fish safety and are currently compiling the tools. We hope that those can be applied to the fish value chain in Uganda later. The tools will shortly be posted to our fish wiki.

From August 20-24, 2012, SFFF will be represented at the 13th International Symposium on Veterinary Epidemiology & Economics in Maastricht, The Netherlands.