Zimbabwe says will vaccinate against foot-and-mouth
Date: 24-Aug-01
Country: ZIMBABWE
"We are not going to slaughter cattle because of the foot-and-mouth. Slaughtering at the abattoirs will continue and meat will be put onto the market," said the association's chairman Timothy Reynolds.
"We've set up a task force with the government and industry players. There will be no movement of cattle until futher notice," Reynolds told Reuters.
"Vaccines will be used to slow down the infection."
The communal farmers' cattle herd numbered about 4.5 million animals and the commercial herd was 1.2 million strong, he said.
Zimbabwe had dealt with many foot-and-mouth outbreaks and had the experience to deal with it, he added.
The recent land grabs and lawlessness in the countryside may have been a contributing factor as landless black people seized hundreds of white-owned farms, tore down fences and staked out plots for themselves with government backing, the ZCPA said.
"There has been a lot of illegal movement of cattle around the country, fences have been destroyed. This could be one of the reasons. Cattle strayed into wildlife areas, so cattle could have contracted the disease from buffalo and wildlife," Reynolds said.
The government said this week foot-and-mouth had been detected at a feedlot of a state-owned beef corporation near the second city of Bulawayo in the mainly ranching province of Matabeleland.
Beef exports have been halted. The state-owned Cold Storage Company, Zimbabwe's sole beef exporting body, has an annual export quota of 9,100 tonnes worth 2.0 billion Zimbabwe dollars ($36 million) to the European Union and 5,000 tonnes to South Africa.
Foot-and-mouth, which causes lesions on the mouths and hooves of cloven-hoofed animals and can lead to death, is not thought to affect humans.
