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Date : 02/04/2003
Source: Ministry of Agriculture and Land Affairs
Title: Du Toit: Launch of International Meat Quality Assurance Services


KEY NOTE ADDRESS BY THE DEPUTY MINISTER FOR AGRICULTURE, ADVOCATE DIRK DU TOIT, AT THE LAUNCH OF THE IMQAS, 2 April 2003

Master of ceremonies
Distinguished guests
Delegates
Ladies and Gentlemen

I am privileged indeed to be bestowed the honour of addressing you on this historic occasion of launching the International Meat Quality Assurance Services.

Since 1994 several factors have impacted on the South African agricultural systems. The most profound has been the political change and constitutional dispensation. This has resulted in a need to broaden access to agriculture.

In addition to this through opening of international markets, for South African products after a long period of sanctions and deregulation process, more agricultural products came into the country and this challenged our abilities to render good quality services.

Within the meat industry also for the past 10 years we have seen many far-reaching changes. Before the 1990's anybody who wanted to build an abattoir in South Africa had to apply for permission to do so at the Abattoir Commission. This Commission was created under the Abattoir Industry Act in the late 1960's after it was determined that the level of hygiene in South African abattoirs was shockingly low. Those abattoirs that couldn't meet the standards of the Commission was bought by the Government and managed by the company Abakor. Abakor was essentially a company under private management in which the Government owned all the shares.

Furthermore under the Meat Scheme promulgated under the Marketing Act farmers could only market meat in the 11 metropolitan areas around the Abakor abattoirs by applying for a permit at an agent at one of these abattoirs. The Meat Board determined that farmers could only obtain a permit from them through these agents. Approximately 80% of the livestock in South Africa were slaughtered at these abattoirs and Government employees performed meat inspection.

Early in the 1990's (1992) the Abattoir Industry Act was repealed and the abattoir commission was disbanded. The Meat Scheme under the Marketing act (of 1968) was also repealed; there were also no more controlled areas and farmers no longer needed a permit to market their livestock in the metropolitan areas. Abakor now had to become an economically self-sufficient company under these circumstances to enable the government to privatise this company before the end of this century.

Meat Inspection was also privatised and abattoir owners could employ their own meat inspection personnel.

What is also interesting the Meat Board also practised quantitative import control. This meant that only a certain amount of meat was allowed into South Africa and importers had to get an import permit from the Meat Board to import meat. Inline with free-market principles this quantitative import control was abolished and tariffs was implemented which meant that anybody could now import as much meat as they wanted to into South Africa.

The Marketing act was repealed in 1996 and together with that the mandate whereby the Meat Board operated. The era of marketing boards came to an end.

Following all these dramatic changes all the roll-players in the red meat industry came together and created the Red Meat Industry Forum. The Purpose of this Forum was to find a way in which those essential functions performed by the soon to be disbanded Meat Board could be continued. The Members of the Forum decided to create an Article 21 company namely SAMIC. The South African Meat Industry Company. Finally it seems there will be an industry driven company:

* responsible for the marketing and classification of red meat
* the co-ordination of research and development in the industry
* and the co-ordination of statistics and information strategic to the industry.

The Red meat Industry Forum also determined that one of the most important projects of the SAMIC should be to promote the export of meat from South Africa.

What was the effect of all these changes on the South African meat Industry?

Unfortunately in many cases not altogether positive.

Most farmers opted to boycott the Abakor abattoirs. These Abakor abattoirs bought from the private industry or built at great cost to the taxpayers of South Africa became run down because the throughput was simple too low to cover their operational costs anymore let alone make any profit.

Farmers simple did not see the need to pay the abattoir a slaughter fee and the agent a fee for handling the business deal between them and the abattoir management. They opted to either build their own abattoirs or slaughter there stock at the abattoir closest to them and simple transport the meat to the metropolitan areas. This is something that makes more financial sense anyway since it is much more economic to transport meat than livestock.

More and more tiny abattoirs are built in South Africa every day. Most of these small abattoirs however are too small:

* To provide a constant supply of meat to the market
* And the quality of the product produced is usually questionable.

Our observation is that as soon as the demand for meat increases production is pushed up at the expense of hygiene and quality. In most cases the meat doesn't have a shelf life of more than 2 or three days. Clearly a huge problem for the big Chain Stores such as Woolworth's, Pick and Pay etc. Good quality product never issues from mediocre facilities.

There are 165 abattoirs in South Africa that slaughter large numbers of animals every day. 51 of the 165 high throughput abattoirs are large enough to fill export contracts. Due the fact that we did not have systems in place to give enough guarantees with regard to exports of animals and animal products, we had challenges like the outbreak of Foot and Mouth disease in KwaZulu-Natal. Also due too many legislation which control food and food products, led to insufficient or no communication between departments. We have also picked up that the surveillance in abattoirs is not sufficient. This is an extremely serious deficiency in disease surveillance in South Africa considering the fact that the foot and mouth disease outbreaks in Swaziland and the United Kingdom were both diagnosed at abattoirs.

It has been found out that the outbreak in Britain is due to limited number of slaughterhouses. These limited numbers has resulted in movement of animals over long distances playing a role in further spread of diseases.

Government has now proposed clusters, which necessitate departments to work together in matters of common interest. We have also identified seven priority areas, which are necessary for these coming few years. These include:

* The implementation of the farmer settlement programme
* The need to improve on the delivery of state support services
* Establishing a food security policy
* Infrastructure development and
* Human resource development.

CHALLENGES FOR THE FUTURE

The challenge, which faces us all, is to give consumers assurances and guarantees to safeguard human health. A state veterinarian and a meat inspector are needed at every high throughput abattoir in South Africa to work side by side with employees from private inspection companies. They must do inspections on all animals that arrive for slaughter for contagious animal diseases such as foot and mouth disease and help with programs to monitor for upcoming diseases like BSE. For programs like these to work animals must be properly marked to ensure that the recent outbreak of FMD in Mpumalanga Province is not repeated. It must be possible to trace the origin of an animal back to the farm where it was born. The practice of feeding ruminants back to ruminants must also stop to prevent a disease like BSE from taking hold in South Africa.

What must also be done is that the existing resources must be pooled and new industry leaders must be identified. It is my observation that the most successful operations are those where the abattoir and deboning factory belongs to the producers such as a group of farmers or the feedlot owners. Producers who have pooled their resources and build a factory that can withstand the scrutiny of the most finicky health inspector or more importantly future clients. What is more, the cost of marketing your livestock is much reduced and farmers can appoint key personnel such as marketing managers and quality assurance managers with the qualifications and experience to produce a good quality product and ensure that there is always a market for their meat.

These factories must expand their activities to include the deboning and processing of meat as well as the export of meat and meat products: The expendable income of South African households have decreased. The demand for information on how to export meat and meat products has increased dramatically;

Something, which is often overlooked in South Africa, is the potential to export processed meat. Meat that is canned or pre-cooked and vacuum packed. The Canadian recently indicated that the average housewife in the developed world is usually a woman with a full time job who does not want to start every meal every night from scratch. The most time consuming job in the kitchen besides washing dishes is to cook the meat.

In recent inspections we realised that some factories can't keep up with the demand for processed meat. I should also mention that South Africa has not used the opportunity of taking off livestock in the communal areas and utilising the meat for processing purposes. This will reduce the amount of meat imported into the country. The challenge here is to create markets so that we take most of the livestock off the land at a good prize and this will reduce over grazing.

What is tragic however is that abattoir managers in South Africa simple do not know how to meet the demands of their clients. A Swiss customer who wanted to import meat from a European Union approved facility tried his absolute best to bring across to the management of the plant what he wanted from them. After a mere 48 hours he gave up in disgust and declared that South Africans have no idea what quality is. We never saw another trader from Switzerland since then.

You may also ask why you should pool your resources with other producers. The reason is threefold:

1. Decent facilities cost vast amounts of money. An abattoir and a cutting plant that slaughters and processes 200 carcasses a day can set you back approximately 8 and half million Rand. A processing factory that produces canned meat can set you back another 5 to 10 million Rand.

2. I must point out that it is my experience that only those abattoirs with a deboning plant and a throughput of more than 200 cattle sheep or swine a day are good candidates for possible export approval. This is simple because these plants are better able to supply importers in foreign countries with a constant supply of meat as well as the quantities of meat they require.

3. The third reason is that you need the approval of the veterinarian Administration of the importing country to import meat. Most importing countries have sanitary requirements in the form of animal health and veterinary public health requirements. These import requirements are always discussed on a national level between the respective Veterinary Authorities of the importing and the exporting country. The demand to initiate negotiations always comes from the industry. Most Veterinary Authorities want to inspect our Veterinary Administration firsthand and inspect export-approved facilities before they will consider importing meat from South Africa.

This is always a very expansive undertaking that is usually broken up into two separate visits usually 1 to two years apart. The first visit is to inspect our disease control systems and usually includes a visit to the F & M disease control areas. Usually they only approve one or two abattoirs for export at this point. We also only show them the best possible plants at this stage. Such a visit can cost anything from 100 to 150 thousand Rand. This is not the kind of capital most people have handy.

The ostrich industry was very successful in this respect. An organisation called the National Ostrich processors Organisation was created. Members off all the export approved ostrich abattoirs and deboning plants belong to this organisation. New abattoir owners in the process of obtaining approval to export their product may also join the organisation.

The obvious place to start an export initiative is therefore to bring together all the producers and the owners of export approved abattoirs, deboning plants and processing factories and those who wish to obtain export approval at a later stage.

The Red Meat Industry Forum and the Samic can play a vital role:

* By co-ordinating the efforts of those producers who wish to pool their resources and establish facilities that can supply a product suitable for export to first world countries;
* Having partnerships with small producers to create markets of livestock
* Improving our inspection services to give assurances to our consumers
* Embarking on a consumer education programme in order as to ensure that consumers are aware of our products.

Government should also facilitate processes of creating partnership with the industry.

The challenges to the industry are that does the meat industry in South Africa is at a crossroad.

* Do they continue down the road of fragmentation?
* Mediocre slaughter facilities
* And bad quality products

Or do they pool their resources and establish processor organisations and facilities that can negotiate markets for their products and supply a product suitable for export to first world countries and thereby remain competitive in a changing world.

Ladies and Gentlemen: we are faced with big challenges and I believe that the only way to meet these challenges is by creating strong partnerships. I now wish you well in the launch of IMQAS.

Thank you.

2 April 2003

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