Abstract:
A case is made for greater emphasis to be placed on value chain management as
an alternative to geographically based disease risk mitigation for trade in commodities
and products derived from animals. The geographic approach is dependent
upon achievement of freedom in countries or zones from infectious agents
that cause so-called transboundary animal diseases, while value chain-based risk
management depends upon mitigation of animal disease hazards potentially associated
with specific commodities or products irrespective of the locality of production.
This commodity-specific approach is founded on the same principles
upon which international food safety standards are based, viz. hazard analysis
critical control points (HACCP). Broader acceptance of a value chain approach
enables animal disease risk management to be combined with food safety management
by the integration of commodity-based trade and HACCP methodologies
and thereby facilitates ‘farm to fork’ quality assurance. The latter is increasingly
recognized as indispensable to food safety assurance and is therefore a
pre-condition to safe trade. The biological principles upon which HACCP and
commodity-based trade are based are essentially identical, potentially simplifying
sanitary control in contrast to current separate international sanitary standards
for food safety and animal disease risks that are difficult to reconcile. A value
chain approach would not only enable more effective integration of food safety
and animal disease risk management of foodstuffs derived from animals but
would also ameliorate adverse environmental and associated socio-economic consequences
of current sanitary standards based on the geographic distribution of
animal infections. This is especially the case where vast veterinary cordon fencing
systems are relied upon to separate livestock and wildlife as is the case in much of
southern Africa. A value chain approach would thus be particularly beneficial to
under-developed regions of the world such as southern Africa specifically and
sub-Saharan Africa more generally where it would reduce incompatibility between
attempts to expand and commercialize livestock production and the need to
conserve the subcontinent’s unparalleled wildlife and wilderness resources.
