Director-General/Chief Executive, Standard Organisation of Nigeria (SON), Faruok Salim, has charged producers of agro-allied products across the country not to deviate from the required standard of the organisation.
He gave the charge at a workshop titled, Standard Adherence: Catalyst for Trade, held in Osogbo, advised them to always live up to standards saying, the body will not compromise its standards.
Speaking through the organisation’s Director, Southwest, Talatu Ethan, he said, Nigeria’s products are having global acceptance, the Federal Government and regulatory bodies are working with stakeholders to ensure that whatever they produce can meet up with the specifications of the foreign countries.
According to him, “Nigeria’s agro-allied products are sellable across the world and the body would not compromise its standards.”
He, disclosed that, the workshop was put in place by the organisation to support economic diversification agenda of the present administration and intensify efforts to sensitise producers of agro-allied products across the country on strict compliance with SON standard.
Salim stressed that the organisation is at the fore of driving diversification into agricultural products as a means of generating revenue.
“The objective of this workshop is to create awareness on importance of standards to ensure that the manufacturers, producers and processors meet up with the minimum requirements of the standards.”
“We have standard for Garri, honey, dry and smoke fish etc and looking at the focus of the current administration which is food security, the role of SON is to train, educate and create awareness among the agro-allied sector on quality production.”
“Mandatory conformity assessment, this will prepare our local producer to produce product that meet up with the minimum requirement of the standards so that the product would be able to compete with foreign products”.
“Any of the manufacturers that deviates from it are to be sanctioned because,our duty is to encourage and support them for production of quality and safe products.”
In his own remark, Chairman, Osun State Chapter of the All Farmers Association of Nigeria, Sulaiman Araokanmi, gave kudos to organisers of the workshop saying, it would increase the knowledge in the area of agro- allied production.
According to him, the programme has further widened their understanding on the entailment of agro-allied production and exposed every producer to reason why their jobs should not be handled with levity
He stressed that, the workshop has equally opened their eyes to discover unknown things that will serve as guidance to them to succeed in their various engagements.
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