BAHA upgrades Central Lab
It is one of those organizations that ordinarily only make the headlines when we’ve got a Pink Mealy Bug crisis on our hands or Medflies have invaded fruit trees. But the Belize Agricultural Health Authority is always working behind the scenes to ensure that what you put into your mouth is safe. And as News 5’s Patrick Jones reports, BAHA is always in need of equipment to maintain it’s quality service.
Patrick Jones, Reporting
When BAHA’s refurbished Central Investigation Lab opened late last year, there was a serious lack of resources available to the staff… Six months later, with help from the Inter-American Development Bank, Belize’s authority on plant and animal health has acquired over eight hundred thousand dollars worth of state of the art equipment. According to BAHA’s Food Safety expert, Dr. Michael DeShield, the new machines will allow BAHA to provide services in country that previously had to be done abroad.
Dr. Michael DeShield, Dir., BAHA Food Safety Department
“We recently completed a training in residue analysis using some new instruments that we got in, new equipment that we got in from our Modernization of Agricultural Health Project. So we were doing residue testing. Basically, we’ve got gas chromatographs; we’ve got liquid chromatography, high performance liquid chromatography. We also have an Atomic Absorption Spectrometer, which we’re using to do testing for pesticides residue in food and in environment and also for heavy metals.”
While medical jargon is intimidating to the untrained, DeShield says that simply put BAHA now has a greater capability to ensure that the food we eat is the safe.
Dr. Michael DeShield
“Well it expands the range tremendously. We would be able to test a number of imported products, as well as local products, for the presence of pesticides or contaminants, which, we have not had that capability before. Whenever there was a problem or anything like that, we would have to send it out. So we are actually getting that capacity now within BAHA and training the people to actually do the testing here… The new service now is in the chemical side of things, the residue analysis is the whole area that we are developing and still developing as we do more training.”
With the acquisition of the new equipment, DeShield says Belize has taken the lead in Central America in its ability to offer these services, which are more beneficial to persons or groups involved in a regulatory function or the various industries. Patrick Jones, for News 5.
