New standard for hatching eggs developed

Aug 28, 2008 Letters

DEAR EDITOR,
The Guyana Code of Practice for the operation of poultry hatcheries GCP 27:2008 was recently approved as a National standard by the National Standards Council, governing board of the Guyana National Bureau of Standards (GNBS).

This standard was developed by the GNBS in 2008 after a draft was finalised by the Sub-Committee – Livestock of the Technical Committee Agriculture.

The Code was developed due to numerous complaints from poultry farmers about the poor quality of baby chicks sold on the domestic market.

Poultry farmers were complaining about the slow rate of growth development of their chickens and when alternative feeds were used, there were no improvements.

This standard prescribes guidelines for poultry hatchery owners and managers with a core of modern bio-security sanitation and food safety management practices to be employed in a hatchery operation and significant inputs were received from the Code of Practice for hatcheries prepared by the Caribbean Poultry Association.

Some of the critical areas covered in the standard are bio-security which touches areas such as location, design for hatchery showering system to demarcate between clean and dirty, laundry facilities, hygiene rules for hatchery personnel, and vehicle cleaning guidelines in preparation for egg delivery.

Also addressed in the standard are sanitation practices for pest control such as fogging, spraying and other suitable means of controlling pests such as flies.

Additionally, vaccinating, ventilation, waste disposal, record keeping for monitoring and micro¬biological assessment and food safety programmes for the prevention of the outbreak of diseases such as salmonella are also addressed in a detailed manner.

There is an entire section of the standards that focuses on building and equipment and a sample plan of a hatchery is also included together with procedures for entering a hatchery that is quarantined.

Stakeholders are advised to contact the Technical Standards Information Unit of the Guyana National Bureau of Standards to obtain copies of this standard which will serve to streamline and enhance the operations of hatcheries in Guyana.
Evadnie Benfield
For Executive Director
Guyana National Bureau of Standards