Agri Business

‘Sale of dead fish is already brisk business’ – says agribusiness consultant

An Agribusiness and Project Development Consultant says the practice of buying and selling dead fish to the general public goes beyond the recent Asutuare incident.

Mr. Such Avudzi claimed that desperate market women often buy dead fish from acclaimed fish farms which they in turn sell on the open market to the unsuspecting public.

His comments come in the wake of the unexplained deaths of least 18,000 tonnes of tilapia en masse at fish farm, Fujian Farm — a Chinese owned company — at Asutsuare in the Greater Accra Region.

The farm has since been shut down pending further investigations. The unwholesome tilapia have since been destroyed by the Fisheries Commission.

Mr. Avudzi made the allegations when he appeared as guest on the agribusiness segment of the Rite Morning Ride on Wednesday.

“Before the Asutsuare incident, women were already buying dead fish. If someone says they don’t buy dead fishes then that’s not really true,” he told host Austin Ofori Addo.

“Dead fishes are sold…they salt it, they dry it and then they sell it on various markets including Ada and Juapong and we all eat some.”

Asked where these women buy the dead fishes, Mr. Avudzi disclosed that they mostly target large Chinese fishing companies where fishes die ‘from time to time’ where the fishing companies sell the lifeless fishes to them who later sell to the consuming public

“These Chinese companies, their cages are huge and so from time to time, their fishes die and the women go there to buy the dead fishes for the koobi,” he alleged.

The consultant in tasking relevant agencies to investigate the sale and purchase of dead fishes by fishing companies and market women however said most fish deaths are not necessarily due to poisoning but overcrowding.

“The question is do our authorities check to see if there is no problem with these fishes because sometimes fishes die by themselves and not through poisoning as it could be due to overcrowding,” the agribusiness Consultant averred adding that fishes dying out of overcrowding do not pose any health hazards to consumers.

Source: ritefmonline.org

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