Maun — Ngamiland farmers have been urged to take the individual animal identification initiative seriously as it is the key to securing beef markets and control animal diseases.
The director of veterinary services, Dr Letlhogile Modisa told farmers during a meeting that he was concerned that implementation of the initiative in the district was slow.
The initiative was meant to improve identification of cattle, capture all vaccinated cattle and also for easy traceability of cattle owners. The system ensured that no animal remained anonymous and that the health condition and performances of each individual animal could be immediately tracked and managed on time.
Dr Modisa raised a concern that 150 000 ear tags had been collected and only 28 000 had been used. He informed farmers that failure to ear tag their cattle would frustrate government efforts to secure beef markets and urged all to stand up and ensure smooth implementation of the initiative.
He further stated that in terms of marketing, countries emphasise safety measures and individual animal identification as the major tool to restore trust. In addition, he said individual animal identification was the best tool to control animal diseases as the ear tag has a device that capture vaccinated animals.
“Countries prefer traceability and they stated that if the animals stayed six months without disease outbreak, they could accept their meat. This is the answer to our cattle in the district and it is a guarantee to access any market,” he added.
Dr Modisa called farmers to augment government efforts to ensure their cattle are sold to improve their livelihoods adding that by so doing, they would be taking control of disease to another level and also access many markets.
He informed farmers that before the recent outbreak of Foot and Mouth Disease in the district, they were about to submit a dossier to South Africa as they had shown interest on commodity base trade.
For their part, farmers admitted that they had not ear-tagged because the system that produced ear-tags was slow hence the slow implementation. Some revealed that they had long applied for ear tags since February this year, but they are still waiting to collect them.
The chairperson of Hainaveldt Farmers Association, Mr Kebitsang Ledimo said the system was failing them because of its slowness adding that some ear tagging agents got demoralised and quit because they stay long without working despite low wages.
He said the ministry could have engaged farmers to solicit ideas before the implementation of the initiative to yield expected results.
Mr Simon Bojosi stated that lack of commitment by some farmers also contributed to poor implementation of the programme. He said some farmers put the burden on their workers as they never visit their farms to check if things were done properly.
