The Sunday News
Judith Phiri, Business Reporter
THE Beef Enterprise Strengthening and Transformation (BEST) project is conducting training and capacity building efforts to stimulate change of behaviour among small to medium scale farmers on beef value chain initiatives on animal disease control.
The BEST project is one of six projects that are supported by the 40 million Euros funding from the European Union (EU) under the Zimbabwe Agricultural Growth Programme (ZAGP). The project is being implemented in five provinces of Zimbabwe: Manicaland, Masvingo, Mashonaland Central, Midlands and Matabeleland North.
According to the latest ZAGP newsletter, BEST through the project is facilitating pluralistic extension and training incorporating the Department of Veterinary Services, Agritex, private sector players such as Coopers and Windmill, agro dealers and off takers, and research/training institutions.
“BEST is also collaborating with the Transforming Zimbabwe’s Animal Health and Food Safety for the Future (SAFE) project on animal health and food safety initiatives; and on facilitating the cold chain at cattle business centres (CBCs),” said ZAGP.
This comes after the project realised that smallholder beef production in Zimbabwe depends on shared assets, both natural assets such as water and rangelands as well as man-made asserts such as dip tanks and other handling facilities.
ZAGP said the congregation of animals at these facilities poses a risk to animal health and on farm biosecurity.
“Pre-disposing factors in this operating system include failure to keep distances, inconsistent ineffective dipping, in addition to failure to have sound deworming programs, uncontrolled cattle movements, poor hygiene, poor handling of sick and new animals, uncontrolled slaughters, poor disposal of carcasses and poor animal husbandry practices in general.”
ZAGP said some of the measure include perimeter and veterinary fences, vehicle and human foot baths to promote biosecurity at the CBCs, good drug handling–cold chain at CBCs, ante and post-mortem inspection at abattoirs.
It also included controlled cattle movements; livestock information management system (LIMS), mobile and fixed spray races at CBCs to fortify dipping services and showcase the technology.
Furthermore, other measures were promotion of good animal husbandry practices (GAHPs) to improve animal response, promoting standard operating procedures (SOPs), at farm and CBC levels, segregation, proper handling of new and sick animals.
Planned fee for service veterinary services linked with livestock service providers training and capacity building, CBCs equipped with veterinary kits for demonstrations and hire out to service providers in the communities were included.
