9th livestock varietal sub committee charges breeders for registration

The 9th meeting of the Technical Sub Committee ( TSC) on livestock has advised many corporate organizations in livestock and fish farming to embrace registration of their various breeds in animals, birds and fishes.

The Technical Sub committee that is chaired by Prof. W. Akin- Hassan unanimously posited yesterday that private farms and big organizations operating in Nigeria must take their breeds registration with the national varietal committee very seriously, saying that doing such would give more business advantages with legal backing.

The committee which was recently constituted with new members and a chairman has also promised to ensure more breeds being registered, saying that the two private organizations ( Amo Farms and Zactech) who were before it with two different candidates for registration are advised to become a voice for livestock varietal registration.

Prof. A. Adesehinwa, from IAR&T, Ibadan and committee member pointed out that there were a lot of various fish breeds that are in the markets without any official registration, pointed that this must be a great concern to the livestock and fishery development in Nigeria.

According to Prof. Akinsehinwa " I think we need to do more on the part of the registrar and the committee as everybody is calling himself breeder in both livestock and fishes. And we have a few numbers of them in the country. There are several varieties that anytime you are ordering for juvenile or fingerlings,

 that is when you will know the large quantities that are there in the markets. And all of them claimed to come from a reliable source. Then where are these people and the candidates? When were they registered? And yet we don't have a single one registered anywhere, and Nigeria is known to be the largest producer of catfish in Africa "

Speaking in the same tune, Prof. Faleye, University of Ilorin butressed the position of the earlier speakers adding that private companies must take advantages of breeds registration as legal tool to drive business saying that " I want to encourage the two companies here to encourage others to come up for their breeds registration. This will make their business legitimate "