The animal welfare organisation, FOUR PAWS in South Africa, said in a written submission to the Department of Fisheries, Forestry and the Environment that they are concerned that some of the proposals of the Draft Game Meat Strategy are contradictory to the recently published White Paper on Conservation and the Sustainable Use of Biodiversity.
The deadline for submissions on the Draft Game Meat Strategy was last week. The Minister of the Department of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment, Barbara Creecy, called for submissions in response to the Draft Game Meat Strategy that it published in July.
The strategy aims to formalise the game meat sector and open doors for informal game meat traders and previously disadvantaged communities.
According to Creecy, the strategy will create an organised game meat industry, based on achieving the economies of scale that are necessary for commercial ventures based primarily on game meat production, harvesting, and marketing.
However, animal welfare and environmental groups raise the concern that these plans overlook key risks such as detriment to biodiversity.
The Director of FOUR PAWS in South Africa, Fiona Miles, says while the White Paper outlines steps that are progressive for conservation and biodiversity in South Africa, the Draft Game Meat Strategy, on the other hand, advocates for industrial-scale breeding, farming, and slaughter of wild animals.
“These are two deeply conflicting trajectories. There is a distinct lack of inclusion in the proposals of the Draft Game Meat Strategy of principles of animal sentience, welfare, and wellbeing as proposed in the Department’s own Draft White Paper on Conservation and the Sustainable Use of Biodiversity,” Miles said in a press release.
Miles proposed that the department must include these progressive aspects into the Draft Game Meat Strategy.
She points out that increasing South Africa’s role in global game meat production, as proposed by the Draft Game Meat Strategy, also means an increased chance of risks in large-scale game meat products such as the increased risk of higher transmission rates of zoonotic diseases.
Concerned that the Animal Welfare Act is not mentioned within the strategy document and very little is mentioned about animal welfare in general, FOUR PAWS recommends that the strategy include references to the Act as well as proposals on the sentience and wellbeing of animals.
Miles also urges the South African government to research investments in sustainable development for agriculture, which would induce the expansion of plant-based food industries.
She emphasises that the South African game meat industry is reported to be responsible for 131.9 gigagrams of methane gas annually, which has a significant impact on climate change.
“We would urge the Department to review the Draft Game Meat Strategy immediately. The department must seek sustainable solutions to economic development, job security, and sectoral transformation. Ensuring solutions minimise biodiversity loss and mitigate climate change, for example, is imperative to achieve long-term development in these areas, rather than short-term wins," Miles said.
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