Igad eyes digital trackers to get an edge in meat export market
A bolus inserted in the animal’s rumens transmits distinct details of the cow, name of the owner and the village where the owner comes. PHOTO | FILE
What you need to know:
Each animal will be fitted with a tracker for round-the-clock monitoring
Before slaughter, animals will be scanned to trace their origin and ownership thus reducing cases of cattle rustling
Regional states in Eastern Africa where pastoralism is commonly practised are turning to technology to curb cattle rustling as well as manage animal diseases to have an edge on the meat export market.
This initiative which is being spearheaded by the Inter Governmental Authority on Development (Igad), will see animals issued with electronic tags that monitor their movement along the value chain to their final destination.
The move will employ the use of gadgets that have radio frequency signals, thus can relay information about the animals.
Each animal will have a unique number and its information can be retrieved using a computer or a smartphone. Computer readers will be installed in slaughter houses where animals will have to pass through to tell whether they have been cleared for slaughter or if they have been reported stolen.
Abattoir worker will then get the information about the owners of the animals and the county or country of origin as well as their health record.
“Animal identification is a sure way of controlling the current escalation in cases of cattle rustling in pastoral communities as well as help in tracing the animals in terms of their health record,” said director of Igad Centre for Pastoral Areas And Livestock Development (ICPALD) Muchina Munyua. Dr Munyua added that Kenya loses between 10,000 to 20,000 heads of cattle in a year through cattle rustling.
He urged Igad member states that include Kenya, Somali, Ethiopia, Djibouti, Eretria, Sudan and Uganda to quickly formulate a clear legal framework by coming up with a law on animal identification to help in implementing the project.
Clear guidelines
The proposed law, according to a stakeholder meeting held in Ethiopia last year, should provide clear guidelines regarding the devices to be used. It would also require that all animals in the region be identified, their movement recorded. It would be an offence to remove the devices, according to the proposed law.
But even before the proposal goes through the often rigorous process to become a law, Kenya has already made inroads in the attempt to improve the identification and traceability of livestock through digital technology.
In 2007, a group piloted a traceability system based on computer chips which animals would swallow. The chips were linked to a satellite-based global positioning system.
The system by Practical Action in Mandera, northern Kenya connected the livestock to a database which not only identified them, their owners, location, but also availed information on their movement permits and vaccination records.
The Igad digital-based animal identification will play a key role in managing disease that are common in most pastoral areas where pastoralists move with their animals from one location to another in search of pasture and water.
Monitoring the movement of animals is critical especially along borders where a herd of infected livestock can cross to a neighbouring state, risking the spread of disease.
Regional harmonisation of livestock identification and traceability systems, based on international standards of the World Organisation for Animal Health is expected to improve coordination of surveillance and control of transboundary animal diseases, thereby enhancing regional trade in livestock and livestock products.
A report by Igad indicates that the region is seriously burdened with transboundary animal diseases, which is always a strong rationale for potential livestock importers to impose bans on products originating from the member states.
“It is important for Igad to strengthen disease prevention and control in the region to facilitate export market access,” reads the statement from a meeting in Addis Ababa last year.
The region is home to 336 million livestock. The livestock sector contributes significantly to the economies of its countries and to the livelihoods of millions of pastoralists and smallholder livestock keepers and traders.
Health certification
The Igad meetings came up with the recommendations that should be put in place to facilitate the implementation of the project.
They included putting in place mechanism for collecting, documenting and sharing of livestock identifications and traceability systems as well as animal health certification. Another recommendation is that the bloc should establish and manage an effective and functional hub for collecting and managing animal health information.
The identification system, if implemented, will come in handy for the state-owned Kenya Meat Commission, which normally sources its livestock for slaughter from disease-free areas where farms are not under quarantine for any disease. The traceability system will ensure that livestock are located from the source through the slaughter process and to the market up to the consumer.
Livestock identification can be done by use of boluses, ear tags and branding. The Ministry of Agriculture is planning to spearhead this process by approving the mode of traceability to be adopted in production areas.
