Livestock farmers are a frustrated lot of economic actors. I have come to this conclusion from my experiences and the questions I keep getting by phone and e-mail.
Discussions in farmers’ forums I participate in confirm the frustration.
The main contentious issue is the provision of what many refer to as veterinary services, which I prefer to call animal health and production services.
Veterinary services by description refer to the medical treatment provided by or under the direct supervision of a veterinary doctor, including medication prescribed by the veterinarian.
In practice and training, however, veterinary medical education comprises the whole spectrum of services and aspects that a doctor can practise on animals, the environment and foods of animal origin.
This training is meant to create experts or veterinary doctors and their assistants with capacity to impact positively on the environment and animal and human lives.
The assistants are those who study to attain certificates, diplomas or degrees in animal health and production. This cadre are technically called paravets.
Upon graduation, veterinary doctors and paravets choose the area of practice according to their interest or availability of opportunities.
For the reason of training and the reality of practice, those who join to serve farmers practise what is known as clinical veterinary service where they should be able to provide farmers with services in all areas of livestock health, production and product marketing.
Their service thus becomes animal health, production and marketing.
The practitioners have their broad training to thank for execution of the expansive role they should play in livestock production.
The frustration that farmers find themselves in is a result of the structural adjustments prescribed by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
Prior to the IMF prescription, animal health production and marketing services were orderly run in all parts of the country as a public service by then-Department of Veterinary Services (DVS) and Department of Livestock Production and Marketing (DLP).
DVS provided clinical services comprising disease monitoring, diagnoses and treatment, disease prevention by vaccination, extension and parasite control.
The Department also provided cattle artificial insemination (AI) and drug testing services.
On the other hand, DLP provided livestock production and marketing services. These included animal breeding and breed improvement, pasture and fodder production, livestock markets development and marketing of livestock and livestock products.
The entry of the IMF disrupted the status quo and prescribed privatisation of veterinary services to rationalise public spending and stimulate commercialisation of livestock farming.
The idea was noble for it aimed at industrialising livestock farming to increase revenue generation and employment.
Veterinary service privatisation set in motion events that have resulted in confusion and poor understanding of the provision of animal health and production services in Kenya.
The intended outcome of the structural adjustment programmes were never realised.
The government stopped automatic hiring of veterinary medicine and animal health and production graduates in 1989/1990, with the assumption that they would be find jobs in the private sector.
Farmers were not and have not been properly educated on that action.
A majority of farmers still look up to the government to provide animal health and production services without understanding that the role was delegated to the private sector through the policy to privatise veterinary services.
That is why the government stopped providing AI services, clinical services and scaled down employment at all levels in the livestock sub-sector.
Government animal health and production service providers are, therefore, no longer funded to buy medicines and equipment for clinical service except in some counties where private practice is limited or does not exist.
The DVS was left to execute the tasks of implementing government policy, disease monitoring, control of notifiable illnesses, veterinary public health, training and research among other roles that do not involve clinical practice.
DVS is also supposed to supervise provision of animal health and production services by private organisations to ensure quality, adequacy, efficiency and effectiveness.
From my experience, the supervision role has not worked well as there is no structured functional relationship between the DVS staff at the county and national levels with the private sector service providers.
If such a relationship existed effectively, as was intended, private service providers would be working and reporting their activities to the DVS at the county level for onward reporting to the national government.
In addition, farmers would be reporting their service provision frustrations to sub-county and county veterinary heads who would in turn intervene to rein in private service providers.
The chaos and confusion in the provision of animal health and production services has been allowed to propagate itself for far too long; thereby denying livestock farmers a conducive animal health and production service environment for efficient and profitable livestock farming.
Kenya cannot look forward to achieving food safety and security of foods of animal origin if the situation continues.
