Africa-Press – Eswatini. The Minister of Agriculture, Mandla Tshawuka, has temporarily halted the decision by the Directorate of Veterinary and Livestock Services of disempowering butcheries from slaughtering animals.
The minister conveyed the announcement yesterday at a press conference held in the ministry. The ban will be halted for a period of approximately four months, while three processes take place in the background in order to find common ground for the parties involved. The ban was to be effective from January 1, 2024. The processes include adequate inclusive stakeholder engagements or consultations focusing on the impediments relating to the operationalisation of this long-standing legislation and coming up with a seamless way of implementing it going forward.
Ascertain
The minister also stated that another process will be to ascertain the adequacy of abattoirs from the perspectives of both sheer numbers and distribution. And finally, the Directorate of Veterinary and Livestock Services, under the supervision of the office of the Principal Secretary(PS), to providing assistance where required for businesses to be ready to transition to the new dispensation without serious negative effects on their operations and the industry.
“The ban was based on the Veterinary Public Health Act 17 of 2013, which confers powers to the director of Veterinary and Livestock Services to take appropriate action to safeguard the health of the nation on these matters, among other things. There are other pieces of legislation that go with this Act, which were considered in arriving at this decision,” said the minister.
The Directorate of Veterinary and Livestock Services had announced that it would implement the Veterinary Public Health Act 17 of 2013, which caused confusion in the agriculture industry, particularly among butchery operators.
Source
According to the directorate, the source of the confusion is that there were butcheries that were registered as kraals to enable them to move carcasses. Some butcheries allegedly started moving live animals and even conducting slaughters in the bush, contravening various legal instruments. As such, the Department of Veterinary and Livestock Services called for all the butchery kraals to close down and all slaughtering of animals be done at abattoirs. “Abattoirs/slaughter facilities are graded or classified according to their infrastructure and the number of animals each can process. They range from slaughter slabs (Grade D), small abattoirs (Grade C), medium to large scale abattoirs (Grade B) and finally export abattoirs (Grade A),” said the Director of Veterinary and Livestock Services, Xolani Dlamini in a statement.
Intentions
The minister stated that he understood the good intentions that came with the ban by the directorate. “I have been assured and have no doubt, that the ban was implemented in good faith to reduce the health risks to emaSwati imposed by meat products that may be contaminated when animals are not slaughtered in the most hygienic way,” he said. Worth noting is that Dlamini was not present at the press conference and it was reported that he was on leave. Attempts to call his cellphone were made and it was switched off by the time of going to print.
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