Cassava processors trained in food safety

The Women in Agricultural Development (WIAD) Unit of the Western Regional office of the Ministry of Food and Agriculture (MoFA) has embarked on a series of training for a number of people engaged in cassava processing in the Western Region.

About 150 selected gari and cassava dough processors, cassava machine operators and some agricultural officers have already undergone a three-month training in the cassava value chain on food safety and environmental hygiene.

The selected persons, mainly women from Shama, Wassa East, Ahanta West and the Sekondi-Takoradi, were sent to the AGRICO Cassava Processing Plant at Afransi in the Gomoa East District in the Central Region for an exposure visit.

 The Western Regional Officer of WIAD, Mrs Beatrice Quarshie Brown, in an interview with the Daily Graphic in Sekondi said the main objective of the programme was to expose trainees to modern ways of cassava processing.

She said it was also to show the trainees the consequences of producing food in unhealthy surroundings such the outbreak of diseases.

Mrs Brown indicated that the processors previously disposed of the cassava juice in an unhygienic manner, which produced an offensive smell in the communities where they worked, while animals also went to feed on it.

Lessons learnt

She said, the group at Afransi learnt how to thoroughly wash cassava after peeling, keep the cassava dough in clean and suitable basins and not on the bare floor to ferment; collect juice in a catchment pit; and bag and seal processed gari.