23 Dec 2025

Farmers at Malolwane in Kgatleng District have been urged to migrate their cattle records from the defunct Botswana Animal Information Traceability System (BAITS2) to the improved BAITS3.

Consulting the farmers in Malolwane recently on the outbreak of Foot and Mouth Disease (FMD) in the neighbouring South Africa, acting director of veterinary services, Dr Kobedi Segale said livestock diseases outbreak such as FMD and failure to abide by BAITS3 requirements would affect the lucrative livestock global market as well as market price. 

Dr Segale said all services such as buying and registering of livestock ear tags and getting permits would only be done after fully migrating to BAITS3.

“Engage veterinary officers and BAITS agent to necessitate migration to BAITS3.

“In compliance with BAITS requirements, an animal must have an earmark, ear tag and be branded within six months of age, those in violation of such a law will face the necessary action,” he said.

Dr Segale said migrating from BAITS2 to BAITS3 was necessitated by the need to improve livestock registration and traceability records in accordance with the world market standards.

He said BAITS was used as a means to identify livestock, control movement and potential spread of livestock diseases. 

Dr Segale said BAITS was also important in tracking origins and any outbreak in human diseases related to consumption of livestock meat.

He emphasised that as BAITS was a requirement for selling meat to the international markets, farmers were encouraged to take it seriously. 

Dr Segale said after migrating to BAITS3, a farmer would have an account with improved security features, as accessibility of such an account would be monitored by the owner.

“Whenever someone attempts to access a farmer's account, the owner will be alerted to either allow or deny such access.

“BAITS 3  will also give the farmer the authority to remove all the slaughtered or dead animals from the system and therefore resulting accurate statistics of the actual livesotck population,” he said.

“As we migrate to BAITS 3, we must provide truthful and accurate records of our livestock herd. The system will reject a situation where a farmer who will want to migrate all records from BAITS2 to BAITS3 without making the necessary changes as it will be suspicious that such information might not be true,” he said. ENDS