Minister of Agriculture and Lands, Roger Clarke, has warned that agro-processors who breach the guidelines for exporting ackee will be expelled from the system.

"Anyone caught going against the rules and regulations should be expunged from the system because that is the only way we are going to really live up to what is expected of us," Minister Clarke announced last week.

"Some of the players within the industry will have to understand that they will have to live up to certain norms," he explained. According to Mr. Clarke, "Up to recently, somebody tried to send away ackee labelled as callaloo and it is good that it was intercepted here. The conditions for us to enter the market will be very, very strict and every player will have to live up to expectations."

US ban on ackee

The warning came against the background of an announcement by Mr. Clarke that ackee exports, which were banned in December last year by the United States' Federal Drug Administration (FDA), is to resume this month. The ban was effected after 31 cases of tinned ackee from Jamaica were found with unusually high levels of the toxin hypoglycin. A study to determine the cause was afterwards ordered by the FDA.

The initial findings of the study, Dr. André Gordon, president of the Jamaica Exporters Association said, "indicate that what was happening in the industry is that people were no longer waiting for the fruit to ripen and they were taking all the fruit off the tree."