Respect animal rights to stimulate productivity

NAIROBI: The brutal killings of two lions last week sparked off emotional condemnation against the heinous acts. I was equally disturbed — Mohawk and Lemek’s kingdoms didn’t have to be ended abruptly by 10 minus one bullets and a number of poisoned arrows.

If you must kill an animal, please do it humanely using the least painful means. In veterinary jargon, you don’t kill. You painlessly put animals to sleep if you really have to.

You may wonder why I am talking about lions in a column that address livestock issues. A zebra is an untamed donkey, a leopard is the wild form of our domestic cat, buffaloes remind me of cows lost in the wild on their way back home, jackals are but dogs without masters, warthogs are pigs with an extra set of protruding tusks.

In their jungle, they play an ecological role that balances the ecosystem and open the human imagination to the powerful force of nature. They suffer the same diseases like our domesticated species. They are part of our Godly given subjects and heritage that we must pass on to generations in waiting. Some are a source of food, but most are a source of national income. We must talk about them even to our farmers as veterinarians.

Human-animals relation is governed by a number of laws written in their volumes or engraved in nature. How we treat our animals is continually being judged by fellow men and nature.

The public that was treated to the killings of these two lions didn’t need knowledge of any law to condemn the acts. All they knew is that it wasn’t the right way to do it.

So then, the test of animal welfare and rights should be taken by all farmers.

How well do you treat your animals? What is it that defines your relationship with your livestock? Is it the cash at the end of the day or do you also look at your animals as living beings though guided largely by instincts but also with a pinch of emotions, yearning for that tender love and care (TLC)?

If we develop emotional attachment to our phones, cars, tractors and buildings, should we not care more for live animals?  While most of farmers love their animals, a few sadly don’t. Have you not seen people overload   donkeys with excess cargo then whipping them to walk faster? Haven’t you seen chicken loaded on the roof rack of speeding cars in the full glare of traffic policemen?

Haven’t you seen farmers who keep pigs in squalid stys?   Haven’t you seen bucks primed for bullfights in Western Kenya?  

I have seen animals shed tears owing to astounding levels of human brutality.
In one of his famous sayings, Mahatma Gandhi said the best way to gauge the morals of a society is to observe how it treats its animals. The Holy Bible says: Good people take care of their animals, but the wicked are cruel to theirs (Proverbs 12.10).

Scientific research has indeed shown that animal welfare is the basic unity of societal morality. Animal productivity is strongly correlated to animal welfare. When we train our children to love animals, we teach them how to care for the vulnerable in society. Farmers therefore have a critical role to play in restoring the morals of society. 

That we cannot take good care of our animals is perhaps the reason we have street children, madmen and women and beggars roaming our streets; yet we have a critical number of men and women who haven’t invested in charity.

Their wealth is consumed by lawyers who take up inheritance cases for their estates upon their death. Such scenarios are rare in the West where animal welfare has occupied its place on the table of national values.

I have written several times about how an act of kindness, like playing music to a cow, stimulates milk production. Science has shown that animals slaughtered humanely produce a higher quality meat than those   slaughtered in a brutal fashion.

Animal welfare has not only attracted the interests from moralists, but from scientists as well. Organic farming is a modern concept hinged heavily on animal welfare. Today, we have five animal freedoms conventionally adopted around the globe —   freedom from hunger and thirst, freedom from discomfort, freedom from pain, injury and disease, freedom to behave normally, and freedom from fear and distress.

Since you are the owner of these animals, it is upon you to make sure that your farming system respects these freedoms.  While intensive production systems which we sometimes encourage our farmers to adopt go against some of these rights; it is upon the farmer and the public (market forces) to judge what is right. 

When a farmer observes these freedoms, the animal responds by being at peace with its environment. Its biological system develops a robust immunity system. This saves the farmer costs associated with treatment and translates to increased productivity.

In developed countries, animal welfare can contribute to the bottom line. Farms notorious for mistreating animals risk their products being rejected in the market.

While we have not developed a stringent legal framework to punish animal welfare abusers in Kenya, and while   our markets have not reached a level where animals treated inhumanely are segregated, it should be our individual commitment to take good care of animals.

The writer is a veterinary surgeon working as a communications officer for the Kenya Tse-tse and Trypanosomiasis Eradication Council, Kenttec. The views expressed here aren’t necessarily those of the council.