The 2019-29 Agricultural Strategy has launched two years ago amid much fanfare. It documents how the agriculture sector will be rejuvenated, reveals how the sector will be treated in allocating its budgetary resources, as well as gives it policy support in terms of collaboration between the national government, counties and the private sector.

Agro-processing is one of the sub-sectors that stands out in the strategy. The report says agro-processing contribution to GDP is 3.2 per cent; with 2.4 per cent contribution to national employment; and 8.5 per cent of exports. For effective development of agro-processing, the Ministry of Agriculture has pledged to effectively align with the Treasury and ministries responsible for external trade.

Tax support on capital equipment and critical inputs and policies for protection against unfair competition from imports have also been mooted to support agro-processing. The policy and fiscal support structures will go a long way to supporting agro-processing. And it is in this spirit that the Kenya Bureau of Standards (Kebs) has come up with standards to ensure the agro-processing sub-sector is supported to the last mile.

Kebs has approved 28 standards that are intended to promote agro-processing. The food standards approved include the adoption of Codex standard on the management of food allergen, corrigenda on dried peaches, animal welfare (chicken) as well as grading of meat and poultry products and ISO Test methods on microbiological contamination.

Food allergen is emerging as a critical safety issue of concern with the population increasingly developing different allergies to food products. The labelling standard, KS EAS 38:2014 requires products to declare allergen status, especially where ingredients used are known to cause allergen. The new standard goes further to guide manufacturers on the principles of management of food allergen to reduce or eliminate the risk.

The corrigenda on dried peaches, the residue values for sulphur dioxide and fermentation were reduced based on recent evidence that showed the previous levels were high hence potentially affecting the quality and safety of the product.

Animal welfare is becoming a global matter of interest where animals are required to be handled humanely from production, transportation and slaughter. Kenya has a growing poultry sector and thus the welfare of chicken need protection.

This will be done using the guidance provided in the new code of practice for chicken welfare, KS 2945:2021. The technical committee also developed new sets of standards for the grading of live chicken for both indigenous and improved indigenous chicken (KS 2774-5:2021 and KS  2774-6:2021) to ensure value addition and enhance trade.

Other standards approved include prerequisite programmes for transportation and storage of grains and determination of moisture content (on whole and milled grains) to promote practices that will enhance Food Security by enabling the availability of safe food for human consumption in the country. Contamination of food can occur during the transportation and storage of food commodities or raw materials. This standard proposes the necessary programmes to put in place during the transportation and storage of food commodities to ensure food contamination does not occur.

Additionally, moisture content can provide a favourable environment where yeasts and moulds can grow on suitable food material hence introducing aflatoxin contamination to the food. Kebs has asserted that routine and reference method of test for moisture content particularly in maize and maize products is very important to ensure the food commodities are transported and stored at the right moisture level to avoid this contamination.

That Kenya’s agro-processing sub-sector could soon be at par with continental giants such as Botswana, Egypt and South Africa is a truism that will soon become apparent with proper management and quality control of the sub-sector.

— The writer is Managing Director, Kebs