The Sunday News
Mhlupheki Dube
CASES of stock theft continue to hog the lime light in the livestock sector.
Discussions among farmers show that stock theft has become a big issue that is giving them sleepless nights.
Thieves now transport carcasses instead of live animals because it is obviously easier to conceal a carcass even in a small car than transporting a whole live animal.
Also, a live animal has to have at least some semblance of accompanying paperwork even fake ones for it to pass through road check points.
These may not be easy to acquire and let alone passing them for genuine papers in all the check points.
It is thus becoming common for farmers to wake up to remains of their animals that have been left behind by thieves after they have skinned and transported the carcass. What is left is usually offal left overs and the rumen contents.
However, in some cases thieves get disturbed by an unexpected appearance of a passerby and they flee the area leaving behind significant chunks of meat and offals.
This stolen meat easily finds a captive market in a lot of shady butcheries that are in towns.
Once the meat is in the butchery it is sold to unsuspecting customers and the trail of your animal gets cold and never to be found again. I have previously suggested on this very platform that a fight against stock theft should be market-driven, meaning law enforcement officers should frequently inspect butcheries and find out if they are selling meat that has been slaughtered or obtained from registered sources. Butcheries get their meat from two main sources. They either, buy animals direct from farmers and slaughter at registered abattoirs or they buy meat from meat wholesalers who are also abattoir operators. In both situations there is enough supporting documents to trace the source of the meat.
These are the documents that police officers should look for and if they are not available a red flag should be raised as such a butchery is likely to be the market of the stolen animals that are slaughtered in the dead of the night.
However, last week there was an encouraging intervention that will help to nail some of the stock thieves.
Scientists from an institution of higher learning in Bulawayo are prepared to offer DNA profiling services for the carcass remains and compare them with carcasses that may be recovered in these illicit butcheries.
This will provide conclusive evidence that a court needs to link the person found with the stolen meat to the carcass remains on your farm and therefore your animals.
We are informally informed that the DNA profiling done on some carcasses found somewhere in Magwegwe has been positively linked to some carcass remnants at a farm in Esigodini.
In simple terms this means the meat found in some butchery in Magwegwe belong to animals that were stolen and slaughtered at a farm in Esigodini. This therefore, means farmers should not angrily throw away the pieces of meat belonging to their slaughtered animal when they find them at the farm but keep them somewhere in the fridge as you may need to take them for DNA profiling to match them with some carcasses that could be recovered elsewhere. This is the kind of technology and science use that should be applauded as it provides solution to some critical challenges facing farmers. This means it may get easier to convict even the most sophisticated of stock thieves. Am talking of thieves in the mould of Shanyaugwe graduates who were born and bred in a livestock thieving community!
It is my call therefore for livestock farmers through their representative bodies to support this useful DNA intervention with resources so that the institution can be able to provide this important service.
We all know that such an exercise comes at a cost and we don’t want the cost to be the inhibitor to such a critical intervention. DNA profiling of suspected stolen carcasses will certainly revolutionalise the stock theft landscape.
Therefore, such developments should be shared with the police anti-stock theft department so that they are aware of this important use of DNA profiling.
Uyabonga umntaMaKhumalo.
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