Farmers in the ||Kharas region say foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) restrictions are threatening their businesses, markets and jobs, and are urging authorities to allow supervised livestock movement from unaffected farms.
Farmer Johan Blaauw says the government should consider allowing farmers to move livestock to abattoirs under veterinary supervision so they can continue selling their animals and protect their financial viability, markets and employees’ livelihoods.
The farmers made the remarks after stakeholders in the ||Kharas Region gathered at Keetmanshoop for an information session on FMD in the region with veterinary officials from the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries, Water and Land Reform.
“Veterinary officials do not have answers for us on when the livestock movement and slaughtering ban will be lifted, or even lifted partially for farms not affected by FMD and not located within the identified zone where FMD was discovered.
“We do not have that luxury. We have to move towards retrenching people now. I’m spending at least N$50 000 a day while I am not making any income, and to make matters worse, the future is uncertain,” Blaauw says.
He says animals can be moved from feedlots to abattoirs for slaughter after testing and under veterinary supervision, before the meat products are delivered to the businesses they supply.
“I still have 300 cows in the kraals. I supply butcheries with meat at Lüderitz, Rosh Pina, Oranjemund and other places. I am about to lose those markets that I’ve developed over the years. Something has to happen so I can save my business,” Blaauw says.
He employs about 50 people across the feedlot, abattoir and butchery, whom he would have to give one month’s notice before retrenchment.
Wikus Swiegers says talks about markets are being misunderstood by veterinary officials.
Swiegers owns a piggery business that supplies the local market. He says local farmers do not rely solely on markets such as the European Union (EU), South Africa and Botswana.
“Piggeries do not export at all to foreign markets. We supply to a local market. In fact, when we cannot supply the local market, we import. But the officials talk as if the EU is the only market that has to be waited out, protocols followed and trade resumed with,” Swiegers says.
He says the situation varies from one local business to another and that the government should assess each business individually and make decisions to ease the turmoil facing the meat industry.
“I have businesses that I supply in Windhoek with pork. I’m losing those markets now because I can’t supply them anymore and other businesses are supplying them,” Swiegers says.
||Kharas governor Dawid Gertze has raised concerns about subsistence communal farmers.
“My heart is bleeding for these farmers. Imagine communal farmers, who, every month sell,about five to six small livestock just to make ends meet. How are they coping?” he says.
Natangwe Amuthenu from veterinary services says the entire ||Kharas region has been declared an FMD control area and that domestic movement of all live cloven-hoofed animals (cattle, sheep, goats, pigs, and game) into, out of, or within this region remains entirely suspended.
Amuthenu noted that the Directorate of Veterinary Services is actively executing a plan to divide the traditionally FMD-free zone into smaller, localised containment zones using game fences to completely isolate the outbreak pockets.
“We are aware that red meat industry bodies (such as the Namibia Agricultural Union) are currently petitioning veterinary authorities for highly controlled, bio-secure direct transit routes from uninfected commercial farms straight to designated abattoirs, but we do not know how long this will take to be approved,” Amuthenu says.
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