COMPUTERISED QUALITY CONTROL FOR A FAMILY POULTRY DEVELOPMENT PROJECT

Significant improvements in the profitability of family poultry can be obtained through the application of appropriate technology and targeted inputs. In a large family poultry development project, this is often done through third party organisations that are responsible for training and coordination of inputs. The question arises as to how to be sure that a large number of customers are indeed experiencing productive and profitable poultry operations. In the system described, each customer is given a unique identity number that is recorded with her name, address, enterprise and location. The customers trained through a given organisation and working in a given geographical area can be sampled at random through field visits, giving a representative picture of all the customers, to ensure quality control. In addition, production parameters of different poultry enterprises as well as financial data are routinely recorded on standard forms, which enables the system to calculate the mean productivity and profitability of the enterprises. Links between the enterprises permit epidemiological tracking. The system is illustrated with respect to th