The ManicaPost
LIVESTOCK has evolved to become one of the most important social and economic symbols in Zimbabwe. It is often synonymous with nationalistic sentiment and pride.
Its many products like milk, eggs, meat, wool, leather ― can allow families to put food on the table, improve their nutrition, send their children to school and purchase medicine for themselves and their animals.
Veterinary care, grazing lands, feed grain, reliable water sources, good roads and embracement of modern breeding technologies are all critical in ensuring a robust livestock sector.
Therefore, the issue of cattle health cannot be underestimated to the extent that anyone with responsibility for cattle or other bovine animals must follow the rules and procedures that apply to their management and movement restrictions to curb the spread of diseases like foot and mouth to uncontaminated or clean zones.
Our expectation is that all those responsible for cattle must follow the correct procedures for identifying and keeping records, reporting certain events like births, movements, deaths, and lost and stolen animals to the relevant authorities and the police.
The information should be truthful, and any misrepresentation must be punishable.
Elsewhere in this paper we carry a sad story where the veterinary authorities in Manicaland shot 15 ‘foot and mouth cattle’ and burnt the carcases.
The bovines had been illegally moved from a quarantined red zone area of Gutu to a clean area of Penhalonga in Mutasa district.
While we commend the veterinary authorities for the swift and punitive action, we should not lose focus to the fact that we lack an astute and sophisticated livestock movement tracking system in this country.
This is one reason why stock theft is so rife in this country.
It is free-for-all.
That the farmer in question was selfish is not contestable. It is the gravity of his transgression that remains of concern to us.
Thousands of animals, including a dairy farm in the area, were put at risk. Vaccination is very expensive, one injection costs US$3, and one cattle needs about four injections. Moreso, these injections are not readily available in Zimbabwe.
While the matter should be pursued to its logical conclusion, it is also important to educate livestock farmers to be always responsible.
The farmer was in wilful violation of Statutory Instrument 280 of 1984 Animal Health (Movement of Cattle and Pigs) Regulations of 1984, which regulates the movement of livestock from quarantined zone.
That the farmer solicited for a cattle movement permit on the pretext that the cattle were destined for direct slaughter in Chipinge, which is another red zone, but ended up in Mutasa, raise more questions than answers.
There is or was an element of connivance and corruption here.
That the animal left Gutu and ended up in Mutasa, not Chipinge without a red flag shows how porous our system is.
FMD can spread very fast because it’s highly contagious, hence the only way to prevent the spread is to restrict the movement of animals and to prevent infected animals from having any contact with clean ones.
Zimbabwe needs to tighten restriction of the movement of animals from affected parts of the country. This is the best way to contain the outbreak. Laxity of enforcement has catastrophic consequences to the livestock sector and the prospects of the sector to export red meat on the international market.
Surely the veterinary department should not always be reactionary. There appear to be sophisticated cattle rustling gangs that are slaughtering and smuggling infected meat into cleaner zones. There is need to capacitate the veterinary department so that its officers are always on top of the situation. We should take a cue from how other nations are doing it and follow suit. One less economically damaging way of controlling foot and mouth disease is the use of traceability systems which have been used effectively in Namibia to map out which areas need to be quarantined and manage the movement of livestock.
The system tracks animal movement, identifies all animals uniquely, monitors animal health, assists in disease control and manages feed. Because it’s so efficient, traceability is now a requirement to export meat to the EU and America.
Zimbabwe needs to have such a system in place.
