Build slaughter-houses to curb diseases

| Friday July 2, 2010 00:00

The animal viral disease is unknown in Botswana and the cases are the first ever detected. In humans, we are told, the disease may present with fever, muscle or joint pains and bleeding from the nose, mouth and skin which can lead to death, while in animals it is characterised by abortion at all stages of pregnancy and high mortality in young ones. The ministry tells us that we should avoid potentially diseased meat, milk and other animal products from animals sick with the disease. The ministry has, in an in an effort to prevent further spread of the disease, banned free movement of cattle and livestock in areas within proximity of Seribe Crush, with immediate effect.

Animals may not enter, move within or exit the areas of Kgatleng, South East, and Gaborone all the way to the Greater Goodhope area. This effort is laudable. However this good effort is likely to be defeated by government's failure to plan. For many years councillors in various areas have called for slaughterhouses to be built in their areas. Without properly constructed and monitored slaughterhouses people slaughter animals anywhere.

Hundreds of butcheries in the areas likely to be immediately affected still do their own slaughtering. The animals are slaughtered anywhere - in the bush, in the kraals or in the butchery premises. Then we have ordinary folks who want to slaughter an animal for a wedding or a funeral or some social event. While on the one hand butchers may knowingly slaughter diseased animals, ordinary folks who simply want to slaughter for family or social consumption may not know that an animal is diseased. Indeed, even the butchers themselves may not be aware that an animal is diseased. The diseased meat will be eaten by hundreds of people, in homes, in social braai places and may not be roasted or cooked at a temperature or for the length that would kill the virus in the meat.

The result could be catastrophic. This could very easily be avoided if government had built slaughterhouses. The slaughterhouses would necessarily be properly resourced both in terms of personnel and resources. It would be easy for specialists such as veterinarians to inspect and pass animals for slaughter. Diseased animals would properly be disposed of or treated and would not become meat for human consumption as is likely to be the case should there be a spread of the Rift Valley Fever. The current situation must present a dilemma for the government. For while it is clear that hundreds of people may be in danger, in the event of a spread of the disease, the government would appear ridiculous to ban slaughtering of animals anywhere but in slaughterhouses, as there simply aren't any. This dilemma should be a wake up call for government. Government should build or facilitate the building of fully-resourced slaughterhouses around the country to prevent possible but preventable spread of diseases such as the said Rift Valley Fever.

Today's thought

'All our knowledge merely helps us to die a more painful death than animals that know nothing.'

- Maurice Maeterlinck