25 May 2016

The Botswana Meat Commission (BMC) plant manager, Mr Bosiela Saudu has told the Francistown city councillors that the city abattoir has never managed to reach its slaughter target.

Addressing councillors during the on-going full council on Tuesday, Mr Saudu said the abattoir was supposed to slaughter 400 cattle per day which was equivalent to 8 000 per year but it had never reached the target since its inception 30 years ago.

Mr Saudu explained that last year the abattoir targeted 46 000 but only managed to slaughter 20 000 cattle and in 2014 the target was 68 000 and only 27 000 was slaughtered.

He said the statistics showed that the Francistown abattoir was not doing well because in 2010 only 11 000 cattle were slaughtered as a result of the Foot and Mouth Disease (FMD) outbreak.

He however, said apart from the FMD outbreak, the farmers in the region were not bringing the requested cattle numbers. 

Mr Saudu said last year in October, BMC called a farmers and stakeholders meeting to try and establish why the target was never met and the farmers indicated that the BMC prices were too low despite the expensive cattle feeds.

He indicated that BMC tried to address the problem by increasing the prices and doing away with the grading system but the farmers were still not forthcoming.

He indicated that as a result of failure to meet the target the plant retrenched about 153 to reduce the wage bill by 40 per cent. 

The plant manager further told the councillors that the Francistown abattoir was delisted from supplying the European market and only slaughter for local consumption and markets in South Africa and Angola.

He however, indicated that all relevant stakeholders are working around the clock to ensure that the abattoir regains its status of supplying the EU market. 

Apart from the challenges he indicated, Mr Saudu said last month the abattoir was audited by MacDonald, which is one of the companies they export beef to, and it attained the highest mark of 93 per cent compared to 89 per cent and 75 per cent in 2015 and 2014 respectively.

He said the British Retail Consortium Company, which is the largest company that BMC exports beef to in Europe, also came to audit and rated the Francistown abattoir A last year but this year’s results were not yet out. 

He said this year they were expecting AA which was the highest mark in Africa. Mr Saudu said if it was not for the lack of supply of cattle by the farmers the abattoir could be doing exceptionally well.

During comments and questions, councillor Badubi Lekang of Ntshe Ward said BMC was on the brink of closure because it was not doing enough to buy Zone 7 cattle and lack of free movement of cloven hoofed animals in the zone negatively impacted the supply.

Councillor Lekang suggested that BMC should not expect farmers to bring cattle but should instead go and buy from the farmers. 

Another councillor, Mr Lesego Kwambala of Itekeng Ward noted that it was important for BMC not to depend on exporting beef only but try and diversify.ENDS