Govt suspends cow branding after sensitive farmers protest

The Swazi government has given in to pressure from cattle owners and indefinitely suspended a law requiring all animals to be branded for identification. The move is another blow to the local meat industry, which is still reeling from the impact of a European Union (EU) ban on Swazi meat in April this year. "People want to know where the meat they are eating comes from. If we could adhere to the branding law our markets would increase", Agriculture Minister Mtiti Fakudze told a group of cattle owners at the Farmers Development Centre in Ngonini, 40 km northwest of the capital, Mbabane. Cattle owners told the minister that branding hurt their cattle, and left permanent marks on the hides. Fakudze said indelible marking was the point of branding, and was a security measure. "The aim of branding is to make cattle easily identifiable, even when they are smuggled into neighbouring countries," he pointed out. Swaziland enjoys a quota of 3,363 mt of boneless beef sales to the EU, guaranteed under a bilateral treaty, but the EU was forced to halt imports after Swaziland failed to produce the necessary paperwork needed to track the provenance of slaughtered cattle, including their inoculations. The unresolved situation has hobbled entry to new markets. Swazi farmers exported just over US $1 million of beef in 2004/05, down from $4.4 million in 2003, because of the EU ban. "A large number of cattle were killed overseas because of the outbreak of cattle diseases, especially mad cow [disease]. This has prompted them to want to know where the beef came from," Fakudze explained. A spokesman for Swaziland Meat Industries defended Swazi beef, saying it was not diseased, but the absence of veterinary records and other data has continued to block foreign sales. The agriculture ministry's failure to enforce the branding law echoed its failure a decade ago to make cattle owners pay for veterinary services, which the government could not afford. Angry farmers had called for the removal of the agriculture ministry, arguing that by custom all cattle belonged to the Swazi king, who could not be taxed. The government currently provides free veterinary services. Cattle are an integral part of Swaziland's culture: small-scale farmers measure their wealth by the number in their kraal and few are slaughtered for profit. Despite a national cattle population of over 600,000 head, compared to a human population of about one million, Swaziland is a net importer of meat.