Moshi poultry company burns live chicks for lack of market

Arusha. Livestock experts and animal welfare activists have castigated a Moshi-based poultry keeper who burnt live chicks for lack of market.

Reports had it that the trader decided to put on fire thousands of cartons with the live chicks after traditional buyers declined to purchase them.

Several people, including animal welfare activists and members of the business community in Arusha have expressed their shock over the incident.

The Tanzania Veterinary Association (TVA), a professional body of veterinary experts, said it was saddened by the burning of live chicks.

In a statement posted on the social media, the association said the deplorable action was against the law and should be condemned.

The Moshi-based firm (name withheld) claimed that it decided to put the chicks on fire for lack of market.

It defended the action based on Government Notice No. 959 of 2019 which restricted rearing chicks beyond 72 hours at hatcheries.

However, TVA said it was not convinced by what the company did because the welfare of animals - domestic and wild - is equally protected by law.

It described the torching as a form of cruelty to animals because a chicken like any other animal is “a sentient being having the ability to think, reason, feel pain and have emotions.”

Burning of live animals, the association insisted, was against the country’s mother law on Animal Welfare of 2009 and all its caps and clauses.

TVA has called on the relevant government authorities to take punitive action against the poultry owner “for the cruel action.”

An Arusha businessman Walter Maeda said he was shocked to hear the torching of live chicks, noting that he was reaching out to his partners in Moshi for details.

TV viewers on Monday evening were treated to bizarre scenes of various cartoons with live chicks being put on fire in the full glare of the cameras.

Several clips of the same were making rounds in the social media until Tuesday with many people apparently at a loss of what really happened.

The baby chicks could even afford their usual peeps inside their boxes even as they were consumed by the fierce flames of fire.

Efforts to contact the management of the Moshi-based poultry firm were futile as were comments from officials of the Livestock ministry in Kilimanjaro Region.

The Citizen could not confirm the number of the chicks put on fire by its owner although some reports had it that they were 50,000.

The incident happened only weeks after President Samia Suluhu Hassan faulted the burning of live chicks from Kenya five years ago on order from officials from the Livestock ministry.

The 6,400 live chickens, imported from the neighbouring country, were impounded at the Namanga border town and were torched in November 2017 on grounds that they were smuggled in.

The Head of State who was addressing lawyers from the East African region said the action nearly soiled the historical relations between Tanzania and Kenya.

“It was not a good way to handle such imports. Even chickens have the right to live,” she said as she opened a conference organised by the East African Law Society (EALS) here.

The move was criticised by members of the business community from the two neighbouring countries as well as animal rights groups.

The animal rights groups said it was a wrong measure while the Tanzania Animal Welfare Society executive director, Mr Thomas Kahema, hinted there were better ways to handle the issue.