Producing healthy eggs for children

Children in most developing countries receive inadequate amounts of proteins, vitamins and essential fatty acids that are necessary for growth, health, and cognitive development. These children often have low IQ and have high level of school dropout in rural areas. Egg is an excellent food model, which increase children development in the midst of cultural acceptance compared to nutritional pills. However, with added benefit of omega-3 fatty acids fortification it can further boost children's congnitive development,  immunity. It creates business for egg farmers and all stakeholder in the egg value chain especially women. 

Between, 2014-2016 omega-3 fatty acids were successfully incorporated in eggs at KNUST. Through this research we seek to reduce the poor perception on eggs and cholesterol, which affects its consumption. We seek support to increase production of omega-3 eggs and strenghten the egg value chain. The project addresses health, youth and women unemployment through poultry farming. 

Historically, higher IQ children are found in urban areas. This is a huge problem in Sub-Saharan Africa including Ghana where rural children are heavily malnourished, affecting their growth and cognitive development. According to Akinwumi Adesina, President of the African Development Bank in the 2017 Global Nutrition Reports, “Nourishing the SDG's”, “Africa's economic progress is being undermined by hunger, malnutrition and stunting. This costs at least US$25 billion annually in sub-Saharan Africa, leaving a lasting legacy of loss, pain and ruined potentials”. Additionally, he stated that “stunted children today may imply stunted economies tomorrow”. Hence, poor health of children can have strong implications on personal and national growth. To address the health shortcomings, we proposed supplementing diets of children with omega-3 enriched eggs, embark on a public health campaign on the benefits of eggs, and engaging government and philanthropist groups to use the omega-3 eggs innovation to create jobs for women and youth in agriculture and managing profitable poultry business. The outcome suggested the one-egg-a-day campaign policy to government to be adopted in the school feeding programme in Ghana. This innovation could potentially increase academic performance and future prospects of children, increase business avenues in poultry farming and eggs value chain.

Between 2014 and 2016, we successfully incorporated omega-3 fatty acids in eggs through the diets of laying chickens in Ghana, the first in the Sub-Saharan Africa region. This proof of concept, supported by Grand Challenges Canada grant was accomplished through biotechnology egg enrichment procedure of adding flaxseed oil to poultry diet. Flaxseed oils is a concentrated source of the omega-3 fatty acids group called ALA, which can be converted to EPA and DHA in infants. Fatty acids deposited in eggs were analysed and proven with laboratory procedures through GC technology. Upon completion of the research it was realized that the control diet which did not contain flaxseed oil in the formulated diet contained mg 241mg and 466mg per 50g egg of ALA and total Omega-3 FA, while the 3% flaxseed oil inclusion in the diet treatment together with fishmeal, yielded 372mg ALA and 1206mg total omega-3 FA per 50g egg. We noticed that our research yielded more omega-3 fatty acids even with the control diet than may be present in ordinary eggs without fishmeal (93mg ALA and 173mg total omega 3 FA per 50g). We will produce the eggs at the University and use then in school outreach programmes. 

In 2015 the MDGs expired, yet average nutritional problems in Ghana were still high with about 28% of children being stunted, 9% being wasted and 14% being underweight. The approaches used in the MDGs included vaccinations, NGO interventions and aids. However, Ghana did not appear to achieve the MDG 4 (reducing child mortality at the end of 2015) due mostly to hunger and poor nutrition (MDG 3). According to the World Food Programme, eradicating hunger and malnutrition is one of the great challenges of our time and not having enough – or the wrong food causes suffering and poor health, and slows progress in education and employment. Our project directly focuses on producing the eggs in quantities to reach preschool and primary school children. We will be working with NGOs, one is the Self-Help International, which we have collaborated with recently to support them in providing poultry managerial skills and support for their farmer to produce nutritious foods for children and for sales. 

One of the outcomes of this project was the formation of the poultry women advocacy group: APEX Body of Women in Poultry Value Chain, which we give seminars and provide advisory support in llivelihoods empowerment businesses.

Sustainable solutions of producing marketable foods such as eggs, which also provide health benefits through farmers themselves will combat malnutrition to achieve most of the sustainable development goals in the face of big globle challenges of food production that can also reduce carbon footprints. Our soultion is in two parts. Healthy egg production to address human nutrition and poultry production to open up businesses to the large population of people (even unlearned) and provide opportunity to address poultry management practices such as manure management to reduce emmision of greenhouse gasses that are harmful to the environent such as ammonia.

Our main competitors are poultry farmers that also produce eggs to sell. However, even our project seeks to work and have them depend on our innovative feed to increase their productivity, product quality and increase income.

However, we have ownership of the omega-3 egg enrichment technology, have all the testing laboratory at the University and produce the eggs to the exact specifications and ensure proper quality checks and address all health concerns. Our competitors, the poultry farmers do not have these. They will depend on us to support them to use our formula. We will compound the feed and sell to the farmers as integrity checks. 

We have been using women in the development of our value chain. There is ample evidence that women led businesses have high success rates in Ghana and they are easy to train. This brings out our sensitivity to gender equity/balance, while our competitors operate with company owner which dictates the path to success and do not consider gender consideration as important. 

We have strong technical experts from scientific, health and financial fields, which have been organised to solve pressing jobs and health problems. This involved strong youth mentorship at our project site who becomes farm managers, health ambassadors, and extension officers of our innovation, while there is no consideration for expert involvement with our competitors. We have noticed that only a few farmers try to seek expert advice and as a result most of them are operating below installed capacity.

Our innovation is strongly hinged on the omega-3 eggs business model rather than the technology to produce the feed that confers the omega-3 enrichment. 

The project feeds directly into the egg value chain, which includes the operators of breeder farmers (layer breeder flocks to produce fertile eggs for a hatchery), hatcheries, commercial egg producers (have layer flocks to produce table eggs), egg marketers, feed millers and feed processors, or feed ingredient dealers and primary crop farmers, veterinary drug dealers and consumers of the eggs. As a result, the project will create the much needed jobs through its value chain and addressing especially youth and women’s unemployment problems. The eggs are useful to many households, especially rural communities that have bigger malnutrition challenges; also the Government of Ghana school feeding programme, free senior high school programme, and various public institutions including hospitals will include the eggs in their meals. The egg value chain business model will address marketing challenges of individual grain farmers under the Government of Ghana planting for food and jobs programme. The project's potential is wide as it will be useful for the whole Sub-Saharan Africa Region and Africa.

We also have the rural school outreach campaign to educate people in poor communities on eating eggs as healthy supplement to their foods as well as eating healthy. The University experts will provide technical support on poultry production to rural farmers especially women in poultry groups to set up backyard poultry farms for egg production.

The omega-3 eggs technology is not a new concept, we are only making it available in Ghana and Sub-saharan Africa where it can be cheaply used to reduce malnutrition, support children devevelopmnt and improve their cognitive development. The linke below also talks about the benefits of omege-3 eggs (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o-czlr4a-hQ). However, our business model is very new and can be used to boost poultry businesses in Ghana.

The value chain depicted in the figure consists of 5 stages: grandparents, parent stock, laying flock and commercial egg production and the market. All the production lines receive feed from formal companies or do it themselves.

Egg production starts with the import of genetic stock (known as parents stock) into Ghana. We hardly have grandparents. The parent genetic strains in Ghana are the Lohmann brown, Isa brown, Novagen and some local breeds called “black and white”.

The parents are reared to maturity and produce fertile hatching eggs. The eggs produced by these parents are incubated in hatcheries and the day–old chicks that hatch are called pullets.

The pullets are then reared on rearing farms until they are mature at 18-21 weeks and starts laying commercial eggs, which can last from 20 to 100 weeks or over one year.

The last stage is the market. Output of the poultry industry is basically eggs and spent hens. There are a number of retailers mainly supermarkets and informal traders (either part of the egg sellers association or independent marketers) in Ghana.

Currently, it is not clear what the daily intake of omega-3 FA is in a typical African population. But in developed countries there are data to show intake. The average American consumes about 1.6 grams of omega-3 FA daily and about 1.4 grams of this comes from ALA (the source of our omega-3 enrichment), while 0.1-0.2 grams comes from EPA and DHA. Additionally, the American Heart Association recommends that healthy adults should eat fish at least twice weekly because of the large amounts of omega-3 FA. The World Health Organization also recommends a daily EPA and DHA intake of 0.3-0.5 grams and a daily ALA intake of 0.8-1.1 grams.

Currently, fish capsules are available in stores to provide omega-3 FA to children in urban areas. However, based on earlier assumptions, rural people and people in most developing countries will less likely accept these due to various beliefs and cultural systems. Therefore, providing omega-3 FA in eggs will be less of a problem. This is because they will find it more natural as they may not think about the deep scientific work behind incorporating the omega-3 FA into the eggs but they will know that egg are produced when feed is given to chickens and this a natural process of producing eggs.

In a recent survey in one village in Ghana we evaluated the omega-3 intake through various food diversity study and evaluated if children under five years were receiving enough omega-3 FA. We noticed that majority of their foods was starch and vegetables but consumption of the most abundant source of omega-3 (fish) was varied. These people claimed to eat the fish called herrings. However, the per capita consumption per person was less than one servings. While they mentioned cost and availability as their major challenge we think enriched eggs present excellent access to omega-3 especially to children and people living in rural areas. A change in their diet composition to include our omega-3 eggs (containing up to 1.2g omega-3 FA) will enhance children development since eggs also supply other sources of nutrients such as proteins, vitamins and minerals.

Lives saved, improved and direct beneficiaries since our innovation is about 120,000 in Ghana, though they may not have directly consume the omega-3 eggs because many are poultry farmers.

We can serve about 1 million people in a year

In 5 years we can serve 5 million people 

The current project is based on the value chain system. The egg value chain involve a number of actors and our objective of increasing the healthy eating of children will be achieve as follows.

1. Register all women poultry farmers, feed and medication dealers, day old chicks dealers, poultry farmers and egg sellers into the GCC Omega-3 eggs outreach project. The GCC Omega-3 eggs outreach project will be duly registered as a social group under the Registrar General and incorporated into the University business with freedom of operation. 

2. To reduce or eliminate the usual troubles women go through in contracting bank loans at 32% to 41% interest rates in Ghana on short terms, also huge collaterals, the project will supply the inputs that they need as repayable grants including:

a. Day old chicks to a maximum of 3,000 from the University hatchery
b. Poultry feed supplied weekly to farmers by our company.  The University will provide technical support. 

c. Upgrade farmer’s watering and feeding system to automated ones, but allow farmers to pay through eggs over a long term agreement (5 years) to increase efficiency. 
d. Agree with Government of Ghana buffer stock established to store food for the school feeding programme.
e. All market women selling eggs to obtain eggs from the buffer stock. 
f. Monthly training will be given to farmers and individuals by the project coordination team and team of University experts and provide them with updated information on progresses, challenges and mitigation strategies to ensure high success.

Financial barriers: The main financial barrier to this project is money to purchase day old chicks and purchase ingredient to start production of the omega-3 feed and the eggs. 

Technical barriers: There is currently no technical barriers we envisage since the product will be led by seasoned scientists who have devoted time in the course of this project for the past 6 years.

Legal barriers: The legal challenge will be how to register the omege-3 eggs company under the University. These will however, be discussed with top management to see its feasibility since there are similar companies registered under the auspices of the University. The sharing mechanism of profit with the University has also not been decided.

Cultural barriers: As the project seeks to undertake more school compaignes we will need to provide education on the cultural beliefs of the rural folks about eggs that may still persists. Some of the cultural limitations include the believe that children that eat eggs grow to become thieves or bald.

Market barriers: This may include either the relatively higher prices of our omega-3 eggs (GHC 0.83 per egg) and how it will compete with ordinarily produced eggs in the market (GHC 0.53 per egg). As cost of feed remains the single most expensive input in egg production in the country the omega 3 feed that increases the omega 3-FA to 1.2g per egg is relatively expensive due to the added qualities compared to the control feed of 198mg per egg of omega-3 FA.

Financial barriers: We expect to win the grant and also we are applying to other organizations to provide support. We have already raised funding to support the contruction of breeder farm to suply eggs to the hatchery to hatch day old chicks. We also have the production facilities all available.

Technical barriers: We will provide more training to graduate students as part of our productions system to develop their skills to managment poultry farms of this project in the future.

Legal barriers: This will be discussed with top management to see its feasibility since there are similar companies registered under the auspices of the University and ours will not be an exception. 

Cultural barriers: As the project seeks to undertake more school compaigns we will need to provide educations on their peoples cultural beliefs about eggs that may still persists. Some of the cultural limitations include the believe that children that eat eggs grow to become thieves or bald.

Market barriers: This may include either the relative higher prices of our omega-3 eggs (GHC 0.83 per egg) and how it will compete with ordinary produced eggs in the market (GHC 0.53 per egg). The is beacuse feed remains the single most important component of poultry production (70 to 80%)

The team is part of the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Kumasi, Ghana. The project innovation was developed as part of a research at the University and the project manager and many of the team members are staff of the University. We teach, counduct research and provide technology transfer on behalf of the University to interested stakeholders and also use the University platform to undertake community development projects like the current project.

Full time staff - 4: Project manager (Principal investigator), farm manager, marketing and sales Manager (Accountant), Human Nutritionist. 

Part-time staff - 2: Teaching assistants to support egg education

Contract - 5: A Contract workers will be 1 Pediatrician and nurses (4) to be hired during edcuational toure of our egg compaign to help in asssessing health of children taking eggs as part comfirmatory studies of the egg production

Other workers - 2: workers at egg production facility

Full time staff

Project manager: Dr. Jacob Alhassan Hamidu is a lecturer at the parent company (KNUS) and the Principal Investigator/Project Lead for the project. He is the primary research manager and ultimately responsible for preparing, administering and reporting the research project in collaboration with the other team members. 

Farm manager: Dr. Goodman Sarfo, is an animal nutritionist and an indepedent poultry farm manager with extensive knowledge in their feeds. He supervise the egg production and birds welfare.

Accountant: Dr. Camillus Abawiera Wongnaa is an Agricultural Economist with knowledge of research into marketing and economic impacts of agricultural technologies. As an agricultural economists, he has served on several agricultural projects including undertaking a needs assessments of poultry associations in Ghana for the Ghana Poultry Project.

Human nutritionist: Dr Mary Adjepong is a Registered Dietician and Nutritionist with a profound knowledge in the role of nutrition in the progression of chronic diseases in both adults and children. She has has done extensive study on the physiological role of fatty acids in growth and cognitive develpment in children.

Part-time staff: Teaching assistants to support egg education

Contract staff: Ms. Faustina Osei Mensah (Gender and Children Coordinator/Pediatrician)

Faustina will serve in charge of any issues relating to gender and children within the projects’ scope. She will closely work with the project manager to supervise activities outlined for women farmers; partner with nureses to see to the welbing of pregnant and nursing mothers and children. She will coordinate the other 4 nurses.

The omega-3 team currently has three groups of partners in which we are collaborating to scale up then  omega-3 egg production:

• The APEX body of women in poultry farming is going to take up all the eggs and distribute among their customers. As a result we constantly conduct short seminars or their over 500 members across Ghana on egg quality and business. 
• The Ghana National Association of Poultry Farmers (GNAPF). We have also recently started discussion with a private poultry farmers to scale up the omega-3 poultry feed production and discussions are ongoing. 
• We are also partering with the University Hospital and the children hospital with health experts that join us on community egg campaigns.

The business model involves the production of the omega-3 eggs from our University poultry farm and supplied to the Government of Ghana to be incoporated into the school feeding system where egg is part of the meal for conginitive development. Other customers will be supermarkets, high schools with boarding systems, catering services, hotels, other hospitality businsses and individual consumer through the eggs sellers association.

We need day-old chicks to grow to layers to produce eggs, these will be hatched from the University's 11,000 eggs capacity hatchery. We will sell day-old chicks to other farmers to also produce the eggs, which our marketing department will offtake to available market at agreed price with the farmers. We will supply the omega-3 feed and veterinary drugs and services to the farmers at a fee to increasre their efficienty. 

The omega-3 feed to be given to the layers will be produced from hour 3 tonnes an hour feed mill production facility. As stated earlier feed will be produced and supplied to farmers. We will also produce the feed to retail stores who will supply farmers that are not within our reach and to also increase visibility, accessibility and sustainability of marketking. 

Our eggs will be purchased by the project public education compaign team and used for their programme, which will also increase advertising capacity of the eggs and feeds to be partronized by other farmers.

Fainally, we will brand our omega-3 eggs with a log to make them unique in the market.

We need funding to start the production of omega-3 eggs and seeing Solve funding is an opportunity to make this a reality. All the barriers we have outlined could be mitigated by other sources except the finanacial barrier. Since Solve has historically provided funding for innovative ideas we know that making this appeal for financial support will be granted. 

We realized that the Solve funding is for $10,000 while our estimated expense is nearly $20,000. However, as you may be aware from our budget template in the last section, we need the funding critically in the production phases of the chickens until they start laying eggs. So the cost of the project can be supported by $10,000. The rest of the funding can be obtained from our production and sales of eggs and injected back into the business. Besides we have all housing and equipment to start the production.

Business model: This project is a rebuild of a weakening egg value chain as business model. Many poultry farmers do not see farming as business and their produtcts are not branded. This is what e seek to improve with value-added eggs, which contains essential nutrients. This presents us with an opportunity to draw along other actors in the egg value chain. In the end, not only eggs sellers will benefit but also egg producers, feed millers, veterinary suppliers and hatcheries.

Solution technology: We have developed a technology which used scientific  procedures to produce and confirm omega-3 FA in eggs. It is a solution we have offered to Africa and can be replicated anywhere. 

Funding and revenue model: We have showed that the business could be vaible with the needed support. From the financial analysis it can be realised that we have reported about 21% profit margin.

We will be glad to partner with any organization, MIT faculty or solver member Solve may recommend to make our business successful. However, we would be happy for a partnership in monitoring and evaluation to strengthen our marketing and negotiations with customers. 

Ghana is always a country that welcomes refugees in all over Africa and there are many of them that have remain in the country and lives abject poverty. We will use the fund to mobilise such people and give them training and also set up in the egg business to generate income to support their families.

A major part of this project involves women, especially the women in poultry value chain who are the main stakeholders in this project.