By Sheminah Nkhoma

Lilongwe, 4 April, MANA: Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) has emphasised the importance of having fish powder in Home -Grown School Feeding (HGSF) Programme as a way of improving health life for the learners.

Speaking in Lilongwe, Thursday during a dissemination workshop for the Microbial assessment results and Consumer acceptability trial tests of fish powders.  FAO Representative Jogeir Toope said they had to assess the fish powder to see how significant the product is to the learners.

“Aquatic foods are good as they are rich in vitamins, minerals and proteins so if they are consumed in schools it means learners are going to have all these nutrients.

As FAO we had to do research to determine whether learners are going to accept the new product and the results of the findings are successful as many learners in lake shore areas like Monkey -Bay have welcomed the project”, said Toope.

He further said there is need to look much in the product before bringing in the audience to make sure that the food is safe to the consumers.

Associate Professor for food Microbiology at Lilongwe University of Agriculture and Natural Resources (LUANAR) in the Department of Food Science and Technology Tinna Manani said they did a scoping study to scale up the animal source protein particularly small fish if it would be an ideal food in the school feeding programme.

“We did the Microbial study to look at the cost of the fish so there are some small fish which are high in protein and so we had to use that for the fish powder and when we gave porridge to the learners aged 6- 13 -they liked it.

As researchers we know that there are a lot of potential to enhance the mineral and protein composition  in schools, only that we need to do research again to those learners who do not live in the lake shore areas to see how they are going to react to the fish powder before proceeding with the project”, said Manani.

Deputy Director (Community Outreach and Services) for the Department of Fisheries Sabstone Benson Unyolo said the fisheries sector plays an important role in food and nutrition security.

He said with an annual production of 186,000 metric tonnes, it constitutes over 70 percent of the dietary animal protein intake of Malawians and 40 percent of the total protein supply.

“The fish powders in school feeding programme to our department is a welcome development and we are committed to achieving the global Sustainable Development Goal number 2: to end hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture and also Malawi’s Agenda 2063 which aims to transform Malawi into a wealthy and self-reliant industrialised 'upper- middle-income country”, said Unyolo