Beef industry threatened

The controversial government-sponsored land reform programme in Zimbabwe is threatening the beef industry, PANA reported on Thursday. Beef earns the country about US $10 million a year from exports. White commercial farmers, the backbone of the industry, are de-stocking on a massive scale as President Robert Mugabe’s government presses ahead with his land reform programme. Many cattle farms are being seized and re-distributed to landless peasants. The Commercial Farmers’ Union (CFU), which represents white farmers, said that besides occupying farms, landless peasants, war veterans and ZANU-PF party supporters were stealing cattle and other livestock, forcing the farmers to de-stock to prevent loss. “The squatters slaughter beasts at night and carry the meat away and this is very worrying to the beef industry,” said Richard Smart, a CFU leader in the Midlands Province where one farmer lost 200 cattle recently. But the biggest threat to the industry is the disruption of stringent veterinary checks in the major beef producing areas in southern and central Zimbabwe, which have put in jeopardy lucrative exports agreements to the European Union (EU) and South Africa. Both export agreements are coming under threat from the failure of veterinary authorities to monitor livestock diseases such as foot and mouth, which sporadically break out in the country. Last month, the EU rejected a consignment of the country’s meat worth more than US $2 million on the grounds that it was not packaged properly.