Cattle farmers have finalised preparations for the establishment of a sh1.75 b ($7m) modern abattoir to enable them export meat products abroad.

The farmers under their cooperative the Uganda Meat Producers Cooperative Union (UMPCU) Ltd, have agreed to build an abattoir that meets international standards. The made the decision at their Annual General Meeting held at Uganda Manufacturers Association Lugogo on Wednesday.

A UMPCU official Dr Francis Jumba noted that local cattle farmers will get double the price of their meet products and carcasses, when the project kicks off. He added that farmers will be able to get better breed improvement as part of the benefits accruing out of a Memorandum of Understanding reached between the UMPCU, Fresh Cuts and Top cuts.

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Agri students from the Kwadaso Agricultural College in the Ashanti Region have set up a company to recycle waste cassava peels into animal feed. Could this be an alternative to maize as raw animal feed material?

The company, Kwadaco Company Limited, was formed by Mr Albert Adombile Ayingura, Mr Eric Agyei Gyansah and Mr Marcellinus Babai, all students of the college. The three have subsequently become the Managing Director (MD), Marketing Manager and Head of Operations respectively.

The establishment of the company falls under the agri-business course offered in Agricultural Training Colleges nationwide. The course is to help identify and nurture entrepreneurship among students by inculcating in them the need to establish their own businesses after school instead of waiting to be employed.

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The Kano state government has trained 10,000 butchers on beef handling and sanitation, as well empowering each of them with N20, 000 through its empowerment scheme aimed at creating jobs for the teeming youths in the state.

At the graduation ceremony held at the Open Theatre, Government House, Governor Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso, said that the one week training was to furnish individual butchers with the new techniques of meat handling and inculcate in them the spirit of cleanness.

Governor Kwankwaso decried the present practice of selling beef in an unhygienic manner and at places of serious sanitary concern, which could pose danger to the health of the consumers, saying the recently signed consumer protection law, will safeguard people from purchasing contaminated meat among other goods.

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Swakopmund — Farmers have lost an estimated 1 703 cattle and game valued at N$13 million to rabies during the period 2008 to 2012.

This came to light following a recent survey conducted by the chief veterinarian of the Ministry of Agriculture, Water and Forestry, Dr Emmanuel Hikufe. Hikufe presented his findings last Monday during the opening of the three-week Field Epidemiology and Laboratory Training Programme (FELTP) workshop currently underway in Swakopmund.

Hikufe said human and animal rabies is increasing every year. “This clearly indicates how ineffective the current control programmes are,” he said. He explained that a significant number of dogs have rabies hence the high transmission rate of the disease to humans and wild animals.

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The Community Based Rangeland Livestock Management (CBRLM) programme of the Ministry of Agriculture, Water and Forestry (MAWF) is a pilot project supported by the Millenium Challenge Account (MCA)

In 21 pilot areas across the Kunene, Omusati, Oshana, Oshikoto, Ohangwena and Okavango regions, experts and field facilitators show farmers the benefits of combining livestock of different owners around one water point into one large herd which is herded according to a grazing plan to fresh grazing every day by trained herders. The size of the combined herds range from just over 200 to over 1500 cattle.

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