Livestock traceability systems in Swaziland and Namibia : towards an impact-for-sustainable-agriculture framework

Abstract

Food security and food safety go hand-in-hand, where consumers of meat products demand to know whether the meat products they have bought are safe for human consumption. Livestock traceability systems are now mandatory if one wants to export meat, especially after recent food scares and the risk of eating meat from cattle with Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE), more commonly known as mad cow disease. Europe has a beef shortage and imports large quotas of meat from developing countries, such as Swaziland and Namibia, but their strict regulations and legislation make the effectiveness of the two countries’ traceability systems non-negotiable. Swaziland upgraded their paper-based system to a modern computerised system, called the Swaziland Livestock Information and Traceability System (SLITS), started tagging communal farmers’ cattle free of charge in 2010 and implemented SLITS fully in 2014. The system is widely adopted and the success of the project is seen throughout Swaziland. Namibia expanded their traceability system, the Namibian Livestock Identification and Traceability System (NamLITS) to trace the cattle of communal farmers in the Northern Communal Areas (NCAs), an area excluded from any exporting of meat products because of the high risk of exposure to foot-and-mouth disease. Their cattle were ear-tagged and captured on NamLITS, ensuring that full traceability is in place. The new, expanded NamLITS and upgraded SLITS systems enabled the researcher to investigate the impact that traceability systems have on communal farmers, the benefactors of the two traceability systems. Two visits to Namibia and four visits to Swaziland were made, where the rich traceability culture was experienced, key stakeholders and system developers interviewed and questionnaires completed by the Swazi veterinary assistants and the Namibian animal technicians, the first point of contact with the communal farmers, but also fulfilling the role of key informants. Creating sustainable projects remained important to the researcher, and the element of sustainability became interwoven with the impact of the traceability systems on communal farmers. This thesis explores all the aspects of the data gathered, keeping in mind all the legislative requirements of traceability and its different aspects, and combines the two key elements of development projects, sustainability and making a real impact into a single framework, called the impact-for-sustainable-agriculture framework. This new framework is then applied to two case studies, concluding that the more layers of the three-layered framework one understands to be of importance and implements, the greater the probability of creating sustainable agricultural projects. Two case studies are discussed in parallel to create a consistent approach. The different layers are discussed in separate sections, enabling the reader to follow the build-up of the evidence to support the final framework. The thesis concludes by highlighting the main theoretical contributions: the design and application of the new framework; the methodological contributions in the data collection process, the documentation of the evidence and the final full picture of both countries, and the practical contributions: the witnessing of a rural dipping event, cattle dehorning and branding, attending a meeting with a group of anxious animal technicians in the midst of a foot-and-mouth disease outbreak in the NCAs, and telling the story of the communities from the perspective of having been there. Finally, possible future research aimed at investigating traceability systems in other parts of Southern Africa and applying the proposed framework to other developmental projects is suggested, as well as further enhancements to the proposed framework.