The European Commission sent inspectors to assess Botswana’s animal disease controls last year and demanded improvements, or the beef export ban on the southern African country would continue. These have been made, Botswana Meat Commission chief executive Dr David Falepau told GlobalMeatNews.
“The competent authorities in Botswana are currently undertaking the final stages of auditing to verify their official controls to ensure compliance with the EU standards,” he said, without predicting when these improved standards might lead to the ban being lifted. Meanwhile, the World Animal Health Organisation (OIE) reported this week that “the last recorded clinical case” of FMD “was in cattle on 31 July 2011”, meaning there had been “a respite of almost six months” in districts affected by an outbreak last year.
Dr Falepau said Botswana has established a trace-back and containment system, enabling the country to control FMD outbreaks within three months. “In a region where the prevalence of animal diseases is a considerable concern, Botswana (...) has undoubtedly one of the best control and surveillance systems in the world,” he said.
He pointed to new fencing limiting disease outbreaks to much smaller land areas, controlling domestic and wild animals “to limit the spread of any disease”. As a result, the meat commission chief was optimistic the EU ban would ultimately be reversed, noting: “A special quota exists for Norway,” which is outside the EU. “The EU does exercise more stringent animal health control standards than applied in some other regions of the world with much less significant agricultural industries to protect,” he stressed.
The European Commission said it would continue working with Botswana and hoped to lift the ban in due course: “Our objective is to ensure, in full respect of our international obligations, that our livestock is protected from the disease, and we encourage our respective experts to continue working on this matter to minimise any negative effects to the Botswana beef industry,” said Wojtek Talko, the Commission’s international development spokesperson.