The National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC), has reached out to pre-shipment inspection agents at Nigerian ports on the need for them to collaborate to ensure that export-bound foods are not rejected abroad.
The collaboration move was contained in a statement issued and signed on Sunday by the NAFDAC Director-General, Mojisola Adeyeye.
According to the statement, Ms Adeyeye reached out to the pre-shipment agents at a consultative meeting held on Friday.
She said the collaboration followed the search for a lasting solution to Nigerian non-oil exports rejected abroad. She said the collaboration would revamp the export trade in the non-oil sector and reposition Nigeria in the global market.
She expressed discomfort at the alarming rate at which Nigerian food exports are being rejected abroad, adding that NAFDAC aims to build effective collaboration to complement its robust regulatory policies geared towards understanding its export processes.
Ms Adeyeye said the collaboration was also to safeguard a unified exportation procedure and zero rejection of Nigeria’s export products.
She lamented that NAFDAC, which she described as the competent authority on food safety matters with global accreditation in food safety testing, could be left out of the list of organisations whose inputs were required before Clean Certificate of Inspection (CCI) is issued by pre-shipment inspection agents. (NAN)
The collaboration would revamp the export trade in the non-oil sector and reposition Nigeria in the global market.
