ABSTRACT

The study compared the prices of finfish and other animal meat products sold at various markets found in different parts of Southeast Nigeria, Port Harcourt in Rivers State and Umuahia in Abia State as the case study. The main objective of this study were to find out the relationship between cost of production and selling price of cultured finfish and other animal meat products. A second objective was to find out if cultured fin fishes are being appropriately priced, considering their cost of production, with a view to recommending appropriate pricing of cultured fish. Nine markets were selected at random, 3 markets from Port Harcourt in Rivers State and 3 markets from Umuahia in Abia State. Hence, Port Harcourt was further divided into 3 zones namely North South and Central. The 3 markets picked from Umuahia were Ndoro, Nkwoegwu and Umuahia main market. Fifty four traders were issued questionnaire for unit selling price of cultured finfish animal meat product in the nine markets, but only twenty seven responded. The use of t-test was applied to see if there is a significant difference between the costs of production and the selling price catfish and animal meat products. The result of the study shows that there is no difference between costs of production, but the unit selling price of other animal meat products are greater than that of catfish. Finally it can be recommended that adequate pricing of cultured finfish can be achieved the moment farmers start processing fish after harvest using drying method.