By Marilyn Collins
Agriculture is a key sector in Guyana’s economy, accounting for approximately 32% of GDP, 30% of employment, and 40% of export earnings. The export of nontraditional products—fruit and vegetables—to Caricom and the wider international market can see agriculture’s contribution rise to an estimated 50% of the GDP because Guyana enjoys a comparative advantage in the export of other crops and livestock products, fruit and vegetables, and aquaculture.
Those advantages arise from the availability of land, water, labour, organic production basis as well as the country’s preferential position as a potential exporter to the Caricom region.
Agricultural health and food safety, therefore, is of growing importance not only in facilitating export but also in the reduction of the burden of disease to humans and the protection of Guyana’s fledgling eco-tourism sector.
Thus, growth in agricultural trade and its commercialization are important to the economic development of Guyana. It is therefore essential for Guyana to enhance the competitiveness of its value-added agricultural industry in terms of quality and safety inspection and certification parameters in order to gain and maintain its global export share.
International rules such as transparency, equivalency, science-based measures, regionalization and harmonization allow for appropriate levels of protection in order to safeguard national sovereignty and dispute resolution in international trade. Guyana, therefore, has to implement an aggressive food safety regulatory programme that includes the ability to address food safety from farm to the table, using comparative risk assessment to prioritize public health action with emphasis on prevention, coupled with an open decision making process involving the relevant stakeholders.
Furthermore, Guyana, as a signatory to the World Trade Organisation (WTO) Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures, is obligated to establish food safety systems that offer adequate levels of protection to its populace and its trading partners. This level of protection is expected to be premised on sound scientific principles, demonstrating non-arbitrariness and taking account of international rules.
Critically, food safety systems should be no more restrictive to trade than is necessary to realize the required level of protection. It is also important that importing countries possess the freedom to periodically audit and verify the equivalency of these systems.
In this regard Guyana must be committed to implementing food safety systems, which, while not necessarily similar to those of other countries, have the same outcome in terms of the realization of the required food safety objective. This guarantees an inspection and certification system that safeguards public health, exposes deceptive marketing practices and facilitates trade on the basis of accurate product information.
One of the undergirding factors in establishing such non-arbitrary and non-discriminating methods is the use of science-based information that focuses on risk that is appropriate to the circumstance and which offers consumers protection from the debilitating effects of food borne illnesses. The generation of such scientific information necessitates the availability of well-equipped and functioning laboratories.
There are a number of laboratories in Guyana: Government Analyst Food and Drug Laboratory, Pesticide and Toxic Chemicals Laboratory, Public Health Laboratory, Plant Pathology and Entomology Laboratory, Central Analytical and Environmental Monitoring Service, Veterinary Surveillance and Diagnostic Laboratory and the laboratories of the University of Guyana. A survey of these laboratories will reveal inter alia, under-equipped facilities for the required analytical procedures, under-trained personnel, a paucity of consumables and inadequate laboratory quality management systems. In sum, these deficiencies have resulted in a dearth of surveillance information, lack of scientific data to craft food safety objectives, food safety policies and the certification of foods and food safety systems. Additionally, exporters are unable to comply with pre and post-shipment clearance mechanisms causing undue delays that have a detrimental impact on expeditious trading arrangements.
The time is now overdue for the strengthening of laboratory facilities to meet the demands of international trade and the protection of public health. Guyana was the recipient of significant support through technical cooperation programmes by international organizations such as the Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) the Pan American Health Organisation (PAHO), Inter-American Cooperation in Agriculture (IICA) and the European Union (EU) through its European Develop-ment Fund (EDF) to upgrade laboratories both in terms of infrastructure, instrumentation and training in various analytical procedures.
Because of budgetary constraints our laboratories have been unable to re-stock critical chemicals and reagents, implement preventive maintenance programmes and replace obsolete instruments. It should be acknowledged that laboratories are costly and that in countries such as ours, competition for scarce resources amongst local agencies may cause some things to be overlooked to the country’s detriment.
In the case of our laboratories it is hoped that far more attention will be paid to continued upgrading in order to provide the necessary science-based information to support both our economy and our health and food safety regime.
