NAIROBI: Kenya government is in the process of developing livestock disease free zones to enhance export of livestock products to Europe following a ban.
“We are trying to regain the regional and global markets that we lost due to regular outbreak of livestock diseases,” Deputy Director of Livestock Development Samwel Matoke has said in Nairobi.
Kenya was banned from exporting meat to the Europe in 2008 due to food safety concerns as it failed to create disease-free zones and meet hygiene conditions. This made it lose beef export quota of 400,000 tonnes per year which was given to Botswana that has a fairly well developed livestock sector.
The ban has been prompted by the failure to check diseases like Rift Valley Fever, a virus and other vector borne disease and foot-and-mouth that breaks out unexpectedly and causing deaths of many livestock.
Matoke noted that the disease free zones are being constructed in Isiolo, Taita Taveta and Marsabit counties.”We have entered into collaboration with the private sector to help increase investment and introduce insurance cover in the sector,” he noted.
He challenged stakeholders in the sector to embrace value addition to maximize value for production that is capable of contributing 2.9 million U.S. dollars in profit generation to the farmers.
Gulleid Abdullahi from the Kenya Livestock Marketing Council (KLMC) said although livestock contributes 12 percent of Kenya’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and also employs millions of people, the sector has been underperforming due to poor infrastructure, limited access to financial services, unpredictable weather patterns, insecurity, lack of strong farmer group, low literacy levels and cultural practices.
“Farmers perception must change towards the sector and begin to look at it as an economic enterprise and not social prestige,” he said.
Abdullahi observed that the governments to start showcase the commercial viability of livestock keeping and livestock value chain to help make the sector vibrant, viable and competitive.
In the 1970s, the European market was one of Kenya’s major export arena, with about 66 per cent of canned beef consumed in that market that was exported by the Kenya Meat Commission (KMC), a leading meat processing company in East Africa.
