- Animals are goaded through overloading of cargo, longer working hours, beating, poor feeding
- The push and pull has put the donkey owners at the center of a trade war and ultimately victims of donkey theft
Image: CHETI PRAXIDES
For centuries, the rural African economies have relied on the resilient draught species in diurnal haulage of cargo and source of livelihoods.
The Equines (Donkeys, Horses and Mules), Camelids (camels, Alpacas and Llamas) and bullocks among others have chiefly cut out their space in the daily activities of households in providing an alternative to commercial and agricultural manpower.
This has been marked at about 52 per cent by OIE in agricultural operations of cultivated regions globally.
Pulling of agriculture implements (carts and ploughs) largely occupies their operations. Most notably is that the ASAL areas where adverse environmental factors and tough terrains are the pronounced features, have the lowest in income per capita households.
This makes the draught animals resourceful as they are affordable to acquire and maintain as opposed to the costly machine operated equipment and are also navigate easily within the rural unpaved tracks.
Concerns have consequently come up in Animal welfare especially in animal handling and provision of Veterinary services due to poor handling and feeding.
Animals are goaded through overloading of cargo, longer working hours, beating, poor feeding, ill-fitting harnesses and use of sick and injured animals majorly indicate extent of abuse and mostly lead to unnecessary pain, callosity, grave injuries or even death.
While these animals are a natural resource to these communities, their utilization negates the welfare concerns which otherwise would be expected to provide enough impetus for animal health services provision as a priority.
Organizations and animal rights campaigners like KENDAT have come at the fore front of pushing for the legislation and implementation of laws that safeguard and promote welfare and provision of sustainable animal health services in developing countries within communities.
This include provision of veterinary staff, drugs, vaccines, feed and housing. Some African states like Tanzania, Uganda, Mali, Botswana, Niger Senegal and Burkina Faso, and have barred donkey exports to China.
This is after assessing the level of impact by the insatiable appetite of the Asian market that has skyrocketed the prices of donkey hides at an all-time high since 2010.
Kenya on the other hand has been in a dilemma in trying to accommodate interests of business people and at the same time taking into consideration the donkey owners who have borne the blunt of uncontrolled commercialization.
In the advent of an emerging middle class of about 400 million people in China, a new challenge has risen where apart from the few local African communities that slaughter draught animals for subsistence consumption of meat, the far East markets have provided a commercial niche for refined products used in Chinese medicine and has threatened to decimate the population of donkeys at a disquieting rate.
The emergence of commercial slaughter houses powered by the top dollar markets have frayed into the African conservative nature of donkey rearing.
Populations have declined with the current population estimated to be 1.1 million down from 1.9 million in the recent past.
While the proponents of the commercial industry have benefited from the loophole within the law where the donkey has been gazetted as a food animal, the rights groups have come out strongly to petition the government in repeal of this law and suspend the slaughter house licenses issued to the commercial investors.
The push and pull has put the donkey owners at the center of a trade war and ultimately victims of donkey theft, illegal bush slaughter and enticement with higher bidding values per animal, which previously could not fetch.
The efforts to reverse the dwindling numbers have further been complicated by the breeding patterns of the equines. Unlike other livestock whose artificial breeding technologies and systems are in place, there exists no strategic donkey breeding program from the government or the private sector.
This therefore makes natural breeding within feedlots the only available measure to improve the donkey numbers.
The proponents of the trade have come to their defence by advocating for mechanization of farm and commercial operations that have for long relied on animal’s power.
This is in the name of the globalized economy which is migrating from the traditional forms of operations to ultramodern automobiles that are more economical and efficient enough to keep pace with the capitalistic models of global markets.
While the world has changed for the last 200 years to its post-industrial age currently, the downside of it is the loss of flora and fauna with tens of species being victims. Various species have been declared endangered and consequently extinct.
The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) estimates that about 80 mammal species have gone to extinction past the century and a half.
Most observable is the fact that Africa has the highest survival rates of mammal species.
While the wildlife conservation schemes receive millions of dollars annually, the threatened equid lags behind in attracting notable attention to research on breeding technologies and advocate for robust protection laws in regards to its role in helping lower income economies and ecology.
While the former is clearly understandable since time immemorial, the latter stills requires research to clearly understand the ecological roles within its natural habitat since the equids have been domesticated for as long as humanity has existed.
With an estimate of 50 million donkeys and mules worldwide, the global trends don’t offer much relief in promoting their population growth since destruction and disruption of habitats continue to proliferate making it the most prominent single reason that drives most species extinction.
This should be therefore a wake-up call to African governments, research institutions, scholars and allied organizations to reserve a special attention for the draught animals to promote its welfare and revitalize conservatory efforts.
Dr. Simon Njenga is a veterinary officer, KENDAT