MODERN farming techniques seek improved animal health and increase yield, while consumer safety plays vital roles in how animals are raised.
The improvement of animal health using modern farming techniques has come into question in recent years with the use of hard and soft drugs and feed supplements, or even feed type.
While these may be regulated, or prohibited, to ensure that yield is not increased at the expense of consumer health, safety, or animal welfare practices around the world vary.
For example, though hormone use is permitted in the US, the European Union (EU) prohibits imports of meat raised with growth hormones such as estradiol, progesterone and testosterone.
The US Food and Drug Administration allows non-ruminant animal proteins to be fed to cattle enclosed in feedlots.
For example, it is acceptable to feed chicken manure and poultry meal to cattle and beef or pork meat and bone meal to chickens.
Feeding corn to cattle, which have historically eaten grass, is an example; cattle are less adapted to this change, the rumen pH becomes more acidic, leading to liver damage and other health problems.
Some livestock have a low tolerance for spoiled or mouldy fodder; certain types of moulds, toxins, or poisonous weeds that are inadvertently mixed into a feed source may cause sickness or death of the animals, resulting in great national as well as personal economic losses
In the past, Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE) a fatal affliction in cattle commonly known as ‘mad cow disease’ spread through the inclusion of ruminant meat and bone meal in cattle feed due to prion contamination.
The practice has since been banned in most countries where BSE had occurred.
After the first reported case of BSE in the US in 2003, Japan cut off trade in American beef, causing a significant blow to their beef exports.
Thankfully, BSE is not prevalent in Zimbabwe, but its occurrence has been experienced in the past.
In Zimbabwe, subsequent to the introduction of several devastating foreign livestock diseases that almost eradicated entire cattle herds, various animal health Acts were introduced and amended, when necessary, to provide for the eradication and prevention of the spread of animal pests and diseases including the prevention of the introduction into Zimbabwe of animal pests and diseases and incidental matters.
Accordingly, the relevant minister/ministry holds the necessary powers, based on the Animal Health Act dated January 1 1961, and subsequent amendments as quoted below in part:
SCHEDULE (Section 5)
Powers of Minister
1. To declare that:
(a) any or all of the provisions of this Act shall not apply; or
(b) the operation in Zimbabwe or any area of Zimbabwe of any provision of this Act shall be suspended, either in whole or in part; indefinitely or for stipulated periods in respect of such animals, diseases, pests, infectious things, land or persons as the Minister may determine.
2. To declare anything whatsoever likely to introduce into or spread within Zimbabwe a disease or pest to be an infectious thing.
3. To provide for the designation, control, regulation and use of quarantine stations and other places for the detention and isolation of animals and infectious and other things which are imported or are to be exported from Zimbabwe or which are seized and detained in terms of this Act and for the management of animals and infectious and other things detained there.
4. To prohibit or to restrict or control under permit or otherwise —
(a) the import of animals, pests or infectious things; and
(b) the export from Zimbabwe of animals, pests or infectious things.
5. To order or prohibit or to restrict or control under permit or otherwise the movement of persons, animals, vehicles or infectious things into, within or from a prescribed area or a quarantine station or other place referred to in paragraph 3.
6. To order and prescribe measures to be taken in connection with —
(a) the mustering, checking. counting, securing, branding, marking, muzzling, clipping, shearing, testing, cleansing, examination, inspection, inoculation, immunisation, isolation, destruction, seizure, disposal, confinement, control, disinfection and treatment of animals which are kept on or are brought on to or are removed from or which stray on to or from land in a prescribed area, quarantine area, quarantine station or other place referred to in paragraph 3 or which are suffering or are suspected to be suffering from a disease or which are infested or are suspected to be infested with a pest; and
(b) the checking, counting, marking, testing, cleansing, examination, inspection, isolation, destruction, seizure, disposal, control, disinfection and treatment of infectious things which are kept on or are brought on to or are removed from land in a prescribed area, quarantine area, quarantine station or other place referred to in paragraph 3 or which are contaminated or infested or are suspected to be contaminated or infested with a disease or pest; and
(c) the burial or exhumation of an animal referred to in subparagraph (a)which dies or is destroyed and the disposal of its carcass or a portion thereof otherwise than by burial; and
(d) the production to an authorised person of an animal referred to in subparagraph (a) or of a carcass or portion of a carcass of an animal referred to in that subparagraph which has died or has been destroyed; and
(e) the inspection, cleansing and disinfection, including the clearing and burning of vegetation, of land —
(i) in a prescribed area, quarantine area, quarantine station or other place referred to in paragraph 3; or
(ii) on which—
(a) animals or infectious things which are imported or removed from a prescribed area, quarantine area, quarantine station or other place referred to in paragraph 3, whether in accordance with the conditions of a permit or otherwise; or
(b) animals suffering or suspected to be suffering from a disease or infested or suspected to be infested with a pest.
The World Organisation for Animal Health has set international standards which bases trade policies on the scientifically perceived risk of animals or animal products harbouring the disease.
Dr Tony Monda holds a PhD in Art Theory and Philosophy and a DBA (Doctorate in Business Administration) and Post-Colonial Heritage Studies. He is a writer, lecturer, musician, art critic, practising artist and corporate image consultant. He is also a specialist art consultant, post-colonial scholar, Zimbabwean socio-economic analyst and researcher.
For views and comments, email: tonym.MONDA@gmail.com