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11. IF I MAKE FEEDS MYSELF, SHOULD I SELL THEM TO OTHER FARMERS?

My personal opinion is that the answer to this question is 'no', unless you already have a feedstuff business, quite separately from your fish or shrimp farm.

Feed manufacture for sale is a specialized business and should be dealt with as such. Making feed for your own farm is an important but an ancillary activity to managing the farm itself. Operating a feed mill which sells feed to other farmers is likely to take over as a primary activity from the farm itself, with a detrimental effect on the success of the latter.

Though you may become very efficient in feed manufacture for your own use, mistakes may sometimes occur. You may be able to discover these before any real damage is done, and take remedial action if the feed is confined to your own farm. If you have sold the feed to others you may not be so lucky. You have no control over the methods by which other farmers use or store your feed but, whatever happens, you will be held responsible by them for the result. Remember the feed millers' maxim 'whatever goes wrong on a livestock farm, the FIRST thing that will be blamed is the feed'. Proving that poor feed quality is not the cause of some problem can be very difficult.

Apart from your moral responsibility to those that you sell feed to, you may be subjected to claims arising from loss of stock or poor productivity on other farms over which you have no control.

However, you may decide, despite knowing all the risks, that you wish to develop a commercial feed mill as well as an aquaculture farm as part of your business interests. If so, it should be run as a separate business, selling its product to your farm as well as to others'. It should not be part of the responsibility of the farm manager, who will already have more than enough worries.

If you decide to sell fish or shrimp feeds you must pay even more attention to the quality of raw materials bought, to the conditions under which you store ingredients and finished products, to the way in which they are produced, to quality control, and to stock management than you would if you were only making feeds for your own farm. Also, because of the increased scale of the operations, you will need professional advice on designing the mill. In addition you must make yourself aware of the feed-stuffs regulations which may be applicable in your country. An increasing number of countries are introducing feed legislation to impose controls on the industry. These normally entail stating, on each bag and/or invoice, what the proximate analysis of the product is. You are then liable to have samples taken of your products by your customers or by public bodies for analytical tests to be made. If the products consistently fail to meet the specifications you may be liable to prosecution. In some countries manufacturers are obliged to list the ingredients in feed (in order of magnitude but not necessarily the inclusion rate), to state what medications are included, to lay out the design of the label and invoice in a defined manner, etc. Such regulations are more prevalent in North America and in the EEC than elsewhere.

However, feedstuffs regulations are known to exist in other countries, for example Cyprus, India, Jamaica, Malta, Peru, the Philippines, and in South Africa. References to the regulations applicable in those countries are given by Cockerell et al., (1975). Similar legislation will follow in other countries. Such legislation is designed to protect the customer (the farmer) and also to protect legitimate and reputable manufacturers from unscrupulous competitors who seek to make profits from unfair practices (such as the inclusion of urea to elevate the apparent (crude) protein content of rations, or to substitute poor quality ingredients for suitable ones).


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