Smugglers cause damage 26 Jun 2006

Doing business can sometimes have unpleasant consequences, especially if you deal with dishonest clients. Nothing new there, there has always been rotten apples (or eggs) in the basket. However, you hope that you will not be involved.


AI problems and food scares have given the poultry industry a bad name. This should make people in the business realise that they have to play by the rules to regain the trust of consumers as well as from the authorities. Since we are living in an open world, where information transfer is just a matter of seconds, we all have to realise that wrong doing in one country may have an effect on the image of the sector in an other or of a company.


The arrest of four smugglers in Nigeria, Africa, transporting 76,000 hatching eggs from Ghana to Lagos, has had consequences for the original sender, even if he or she is not involved, and for the industry as a whole.


The recent spread of AI into Africa and other countries in Asia and the Middle East could be linked to smuggling and uncontrolled transports. Whether it is fact or not, even insinuations, have a negative effect on the image of the poultry community. Maybe if they were only isolated cases, the sector could have gotten away with it, but to often we read about these issues and therefore the industry may have to get better control over the transportation of their products.


They have to realise that due to better documentation, as well as tracing and tracking, any product can be traced back to the sender. Whether this sender is involved in wrong-doing or not they will still get some of the blame in the form of image damage.


In the aforementioned Nigerian case the original source of the hatching eggs was not aware of the fact that his Ghanaian client had passed the eggs on to a Nigerian company who had to import them illegally. But they cannot have been pleased to see their name mentioned in the news release.