A presentation given by Dr Gerard Prinsen of Massey University and the Livestock Livelihoods and Health programme (www.livestocklivelihoodsandhealth.org) to the New Zealand Political Studies Association, 1 December 2015.

1. Gerard Prinsen
Jackie Benschop, Nigel French
Reducing the risk to livestock and people
When cows go to town
Source: http://speakupforthevoiceless.org/tag

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In this presentation
• Key concepts and facts on zoonoses
• Researching zoonoses
• Meat value chains
• Effective and acceptable interventions
Source: Wilson, 2012

3. o more ‘exchange’ between wild and domesticated animals
o Intensifying, deregulating meat production & processing
o Accelerating mobility of meat (parts) and people, etc.
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• Animal diseases that are naturally transmitted to humans
(viruses, bacteria, fungi, and parasites)
• Transmission can be airborne (e.g. influenza), via body fluids
(e.g. Ebola), or foodborne (e.g. salmonella)
Key concepts and facts (1)
• More than 60% of human pathogens are zoonotic
• About 75% of last decade’s new pathogens are zoonotic
• Globalisation increases zoonotic risks (“One Health”):
What are zoonoses?
Global relevance of zoonoses

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• Poor people with poor health conditions are most at risk
• Growing urban meat consumption represents major economic
opportunity for traditional livestock producers (pastoralists)
Key concepts and facts (2)
Development relevance of zoonoses
Source: ILRI, 2014
Source: Prinsen, 2015 Supermarkets
Informal markets
Tanzania meat import rose 166%
between 2008-2012 (Wilson, 2012:7)Substandard and causes enormous
food safety hazards (UNIDO, 2012:iv)

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• ZELS brings together 6 donor agencies: £ 20.5 million ($47m)
Researching zoonoses
Zoonoses attract many funders and reseachers
• Engaging 49 research institutes across globe…
• collaborating in 10 countries in Africa and South Asia,
• in 11 different research projects
• One project is HAZEL: investigating Hazards Associated with
Zoonotic pathogens in Emerging Livestock meat pathways…
• with 5 Tanzanian institutes and 5 overseas institutes,
• over Dec 2014 – Dec 2017 period

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Understand how zoonotic enteric pathogens – Salmonella and
Campylobacter – flow through the meat chain in North Tanzania:
Research objectives
HAZEL
Density of poor livestock
keepers (<$1.25/day)
o Describe meat value chain
(cattle, sheep, goats, poultry)
from ‘beast to bowel’
o Establish where contamination
most likely occurs or amplifies
o Determine where and how
interventions would be most
effective and acceptable
Specific objectives

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Biomedical sciences & social sciences
HAZEL’s research journey “acquaints a man with strange
bedfellows”:
veterinarians, anthropologists, micro-
biologists, ecologists, economists,
epidemiologists, a theoretical physicist…
And it works… wonderfully…

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Meat value chains (1)
Findings after about one year…
In its basic form a meat value chain looks like this:
In Northern Tanzania, some have described the meat chain as:
(SNV,2012:4)

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Meat value chains (2)
In Southern Tanzania it was
described like this.
o Livestock/meat moves through
hands of many (3 to 10) agents
o Transactional relationships are
opportunity/price driven; low trust
o While every transaction node
carries risk of contamination; ‘bow
tie points’ are not quite known
(Wilson, 2012: 12)
Some early findings re chain
http://livestocklivelihoodsandhealth.org/blog/tying/

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Effective and acceptable interventions (1)
• Tanzania has heavy regulatory burden (7 Acts since 2003).
“Multiple and often conflicting legal instruments under jurisdiction
of multiple ministries and other official bodies” (Wilson, 2012: viii)
• On other hand; regulations are “lightly implemented”.
“Value chain participants are ignorant of the laws or choose to
ignore them … authorities not in a position to enforce” (Wilson, 2012: viii)
• From development perspective, the chain “underperforms”.
“The chain consistently loses value instead of adding it; and it puts
consumers to health risks” (SNV, 2012: 2)
Recommending additional food safety regulations would
probably be very acceptable, but also ineffective.

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Effective and acceptable interventions (2)
Next step for social science research is exploring two potential
‘bow tie points’: butchers and meat sellers.
• From who they buy and to who they sell
• Customer expectations and responses
• Views on meat and foodborne diseases
• Perception (indicators) of meat quality
• Relationship with officials Source: Prinsen, 2015