Feed Industries Association Bangladesh (FIAB) has urged the government to ban selling tannery wastage to ensure quality of poultry feeds.
“The government should take steps so that toxic tannery solid waste cannot come out from the tanneries and dishonest feed producers cannot buy it,” FIAB President Moshiur Rahman told a discussion meeting at National Press Club yesterday.
The sector has made significant growth only due to production of safe feed, said Rahman. But an informal sector is using toxic wastage to destroy the sector, which needs immediate action to stop, he added.
“We will sit with the tannery and feed sector people to address the concern and take necessary steps to ensure stopping the use of toxic tannery solid wastage in poultry feed,” said Narayan Chandra Chanda, State Minister, Ministry of Fisheries and Livestock.
“There is no scope of ignoring the use of solid tannery wastage in poultry feed and research has found chromium in meat and eggs than that of the tolerable level,” said Nazma Shaheen, professor of Institute of Nutrition and Food Science (INFS), University of Dhaka.
To ensure safe nutrition to the common people, the feed should be qualified, balanced, and safe as we are in transition of nutrition period, she added.
“Making tannery waste free of toxic effects is the key for a significant reduction of environmental and human health problems where production of safe food should be the target,” said S. D Chowdhury, professor of Bangladesh Agriculture University in the department of Nutritional Biotechnology department of Poultry science.
In his key note paper, Chowdhury suggested use of vegetable tanning process in tanning leather instead of, installation of adequate waste treatment plant and sustainable technologies at tanneries, establishing a quality control system for Poultry feeds, eggs and poultry meat to get rid of toxic effects of tannery waste.
Use of toxic wastage in poultry feed could cause many chronic and non-chronic diseases such as Diarrhea, Cancer, heart diseases, various kidney diseases and birth defects, Chowdhury said.
According to FIAB, over 90% demands of poultry feed are met by the renowned and registered feed producers, while only the 10% are met by non-registered company who used wastage as ingredient in the poultry feed.
The leaders of FIAB ignored all the allegation of using tannery wastage in poultry feed and said, to meet the demand of protein to be used in the feed, the sector people import it to ensure safety. Accordion to them only 3-5% protein is needed in the feed.
