Tracking device holds hope of beating livestock thieves
Mr Charles Kamwibua a livestock owner in Tigania East inspects his calves at Bulu in Igembe North. His cattle were among those fitted with a frequency microchip (inset) under a now stalled tracking project. PHOTO | DAVID MUCHUI
What you need to know:
For farmers like Mr M’Mwitari who painstakingly invest in their livestock, cattle rustling remains their biggest enemy, more so since justice remains elusive.
Jacob M’Mwitari, a livestock farmer from in Tigania East, Meru County lost 47 cattle to raiders one year ago. He is yet to recover them.
During one of his several tracking missions in the company of police officers, he identified some of his lost cattle in Wamba, Samburu from the hot iron brand he had made on them.
He was however not allowed to repossess the cattle since the markings were not enough proof of ownership.
For farmers like Mr M’Mwitari who painstakingly invest in their livestock, cattle rustling remains their biggest enemy, more so since justice remains elusive.
“It hurts so much; livestock is our livelihood. What will befall us if the government continues to neglect us like this?” he poses.
He shares this desperation with many other farmers in Meru North where 10 people have been killed by raiders and 326 cattle and 430 goats stolen this year alone.
The National Drought Management Authority’s (NDMA) estimated their losses for the eight months to August at Sh8.5 million, based on prevailing market prices.
A stalled livestock tracking project could however, if revived, restore hope for such farmers and their colleagues in parts of the country where cattle rustling is still prevalent.
The Electronic Livestock Identification and Trace-ability System (ELITS)was first initiated by the Directorate of Veterinary Services in 2011 hoping to tame cattle rustling.
The technology, borrowed from Botswana, is a digital identification system that uses a radio frequency microchip inserted in a cow’s reticulum.
The microchip, which is in the form of a bolus, (a type of large pill used in veterinary medicine) is coated with a hard ceramic material that protects it from the cow’s harsh digestive juices. The device, that were meant to retail at approximately $5 (Sh550), contains the farmer’s bio-data and can be detected by a digital frequency reader in a radius of up to 15 kilometers.
In case of theft, a farmer was meant to report the incident to a central data centre through the Anti-Stock Theft Unit after which the chip’s code is blacklisted as its search starts.
Data base stations were to be stationed at border points and around slaughterhouses in counties where the vice is prevalent.Farmers and other stakeholders agree that this technology could be the solution for cattle theft as it offers foolproof animal identification compared to hot iron branding and ear notching.
Lawrence Mwongela, the Meru County Director of Veterinary Services, says more than 8,000 cattle were fed with the reticular boluses under the pilot project in Igembe North, Igembe South and Tigania East.
Area chiefs were also given records of livestock in their areas to enable tracing in case of theft.
“The digital information was fed into mobile devices and sent to a central server in Nairobi,” Mr Mwongela said during an interview, calling on the government to allocate resources to revive it, given its “viability”.
The project, was being partly sponsored by the World Bank and the East African Agricultural Productivity Project, has however stalled leaving the once optimistic farmers feeling disenfranchised. Charles Kamwibua, a former chairman of the Meru North Herders Association and a beneficiary of the test microchips, says no follow-ups were done since his cattle were fed with the rumen boluses.
“We have been collecting the rumen boluses from farmers awaiting further direction. The devices are to be reused in other animals once an animal bearing the bolus dies,” he told Enterprise.
In January, Interior Cabinet Secretary Joseph Nkaiserry and elected leaders from cattle rustling-prone areas came up with resolutions dubbed the Boma Peace Declaration.
One of the recommendations was that an equal number of cattle would be taken from the community whose members would be found to have stolen from another.
“Security personnel will track the cattle by observing footprints,” Mr Nkaiserry said, a methodology which farmers say could be highly effective if enhanced with smart technology.
