Biosecurity measures for livestock are crucial for maintaining animal health, preventing disease outbreaks, and ensuring the safety of animal products for human consumption.
South Africa, like many other countries, faces various challenges in livestock biosecurity, including infectious diseases, parasites, and environmental factors. In a recent robust panel discussion during the 2024 Mzansi Young Farmers Indaba held at held at Lavender Kontrei Market in Pretoria North, experts unpacked the importance of ensuring healthy livestock.
Farmers need to be proactive
Speaking livestock diseases and how Afrivet is assisting in controlling them, Dr Didi Claassen, technical veterinary support at Afrivet, said Africa has diseases that the rest of the world does not have, making mitigation challenging.
“I realised the privilege of encountering these diseases in Africa as it allows us to learn more about animal health. However, it also entails hard work to combat them. Parasites, ticks, and flies carry most of the diseases that concern us for our bordering countries, the latest scary thing is January disease in Zimbabwe, and it’s not something we have in South Africa.
“So, our government is continually working to protect borders, but apart from the government trying to protect us, we also need to protect ourselves and our neighbouring countries,” she said.
According to Claassen, developing new active ingredients, new deworming molecules, and new tick-killing methods is not happening.
“It takes up to 15 years to create one molecule, so what we have is what we have, and we have to use it properly. We should not wait for the future for new technology to save our lives. We have the best technology now, and we should use it properly,” she said.
Looking at animal health challenges encountered along the value chain, the transformation facilitator at Red Meat Institute for Transformation and Enterprise Development (RMI TED), Khomotso Mashiloane, explained that Red Meat Industry Services (RMIS) has a strategy document to put at least 250 000 weaners in the value chain by 2030.
“So the parasite and animal health side plays a huge role because it’s not just 250 000 weaners we want, it has to be quality. Thus, we need to preach the basic management practices for them to be able to supply quality weaners,” he said.
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Prevention is better than cure
Meanwhile, Afrivet technical veterinarian Dr Sakhumuzi Nkosi urged livestock farmers to prioritise research and take their livestock to the vets regularly.
“If there is something we need to preach, [it] is record-keeping because that helps when you visit your vet. We need to encourage our farmers to not only visit vets when the situation is dire but do so regularly because when the livestock is in a bad condition, there is nothing that can be done,” he said.
Ernest Makuwa, transformation facilitator at RMI TED, said collaboration with communities was what they were doing best to ensure that information and awareness were getting to the most far-flung farmers in the country.
“We do engage with churches, indonas, tribal authorities and all the structures that we believe have an impact in making sure that farmers take the necessary precautions when it comes to the livestock wellness,” he said.
Makuwa said that small-scale farmers need to take the biosecurity of their livestock extremely critical as it could either make or break their way to becoming commercial farmers.
ALSO READ: Transformation: ‘Integrate black farmers across entire value chain’
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