Drought resistant 'banana' - Field Exchange - Emergency Nutrition ...

NUTRISET have introduced quality controlstandards that combine food and pharmaceuticalindustry standards. The factory follows theHazard Analysis Control of Critical Pointssystem (HACCP), which is acknowledged goodmanufacturing practice. There have been anumber of successful audits by French governmentand clients. Each product has to receive aNUTRISET certificate of conformity beforedispatch and all products are traceable to batchnumbers and raw materials in case of problems.NUTRISET have five packaging lines and areable to respond to emergencies all year round byworking 1-3 shifts per day. The strategic locationof the factory provides easy access to mainEuropean ports and airports and NUTRISEThave their own customs clearance on site byspecial agreement with French customs. Thisobviously saves time. The company maintainsstocks of fresh finished products, allowing it tomeet any order immediately (around 40 tons ofPlumpy’nut and 100 tons of F100). NUTRISETcan organise transport to final distribution pointsif required, although “agencies like MSF want touse their own logistics systems”. They can set upa 24 hour or day crisis unit if needed and loadproduce within an hour. When there are largeemergencies, extra temporary staff will be recruited(many regularly work for NUTRISET). AsMichel remarked “all staff feel responsible andthere is a ‘hands on deck’ mentality when there isa need to prepare large quantities of foodurgently”. Their turnover of products is of about80% to Africa and 4% to Middle East countries,with the remainder going elsewhere.Isabelle explained that “as NUTRISET is aprivate company with only three directors, thereis a lot of autonomy and little prospect of theideals of the organisation being compromised”.Unlike agencies in the public sector, they are ableto work in areas they want to work in and thefinancial independence of the company meansthey don’t have to look for funds to other shareholderswho may subvert direction.Agency ProfileNUTRISET are constantly developing newproducts to assist in research. For example, thereis currently a study in Malawi on a productbased on the idea that amino-acid deficiency is acause of Kwashiorkor. Another study is ongoingin Malawi on selenium and B vitamin tablets andtheir impact on HIV positive adults. A thirdstudy in Tanzania is comparing the impact of acombined zinc and iron tablet with placebos.Nutriset has developed quick dispersible zinctablets for World health Organisation (WHO)studies on diarrhoea in India, Zanzibar andNepal. This is now leading to a technology transferin Bangladesh for scaling up nation wide. TheWHO wants Nutriset to transfer this technologyto other countries also.Isabelle and Michel both agreed that the twobiggest, and not unrelated, problems thatNUTRISET face are the perception that they arelike some kind of money seeking agribusiness,and the difficulties of getting NGOs to startusing new products. Some donors are reluctantto fund NGOs for trials. MSF seem to be anexception and readily try new products.Having spent a day meeting staff and beingshown around the production plants and researchand development areas, I was dropped offat the nearby medieval city of Rouen to spendthe night before catching a train back to London.My over-riding impression of NUTRISET is thatit is a unique entity, which although run alongcommercial lines, fulfils an essential role in apublic sector arena where risk taking and innovationis unusual, unless born out of the necessityof crisis. Basically, NUTRISET stands or fallson the basis of producing affordable foods thatdo the job. Therein lies their accountability. In aprofession where the knee-jerk perception of theprivate sector is negative, NUTRISET wouldseem to offer a refreshing antidote and an idealmodel for potential private and public sectorpartnership.Nutriset, 2004Production line at the Nutriset factoryMarie McGrath, Sierra Leone, 1998Putting Nutriset packagingto good use in Sierra LeoneNutriset, 2004Packaging at the Nutriset factory25