Chronicle Editor
Farming Issues with Mhlupheki Dube
THIS past week the media platforms in their various format were abuzz with the tragic story of a farmer who lost her eight cattle to urea poisoning after she was given different feed from the one she bought.
Like any other story, readers always have varying opinions and in this era of digital spaces, these are shared and spread fast and thick, some even disguised as facts when they are mere opinions.
Some of the views sympathised with the farmer and attacked the feed supplier while others attacked the farmer and exonerated the feed supplier of any wrongdoing.
That is the nature of a normal society, views are seldom homogenous regardless of how tragic and painful the circumstances are.
My submission is also to weigh in with my opinion, support it with some facts and distil a few lessons from this painful experience of ugogo, uMrs Zodwa Dube. The lessons herein distilled are meant to educate readers, some of them who are emerging farmers and others future farmers so that they do not live to experience the agony and trauma that ugogo is going through as you read this. Let’s begin with a tabling of a few facts about the incident.
Mrs Zodwa Dube bought feed from Fivet, an agro-veterinary shop in Bulawayo. She did not go into the shop to buy herself. She remained in the car while a relative went. She wanted to buy survival feed like she had always done from the same shop.
She was given a urea-based concentrate feed instead of the survival straight feed she wanted.
She did not notice the difference. She fed her cattle and eight died immediately. While we may never know what really transpired in the shop between the seller and the buyer, what is not in doubt is that cattle were fed the wrong feed and they died.
The first painful lesson to pick as farmers is that we should always read instructions although we may have used the same product for a long time. Manufacturers can change the dosage, for example, if it’s drugs and you need to comply with the new directions for use.
The second most important lesson to the manufacturers and sellers of products is to have distinct differences for products that are different. Different coloured bags of this urea-based feed could have easily alerted ugogo to notice that these are now two different products and raised questions before such a tragedy happened.
I have noticed that most feed manufacturers tend to put all kinds of stock feed in the same packaging and then a ticket indicating what the feed is and its nutritional composition is attached by sewing it to the mouth of the bag. This paper tends to tear away during transportation and the labelling is lost. It is my submission that stock feed manufacturers must have very distinct colours to differentiate their product ranges.
The labelling should also clearly and boldly communicate what the product is, especially if the product needs special handling and administration. In the case of Mrs Zodwa Dube, maybe if the bag was clearly labelled “concentrate” and the urea poisoning warning written boldly and clearly, she would have noticed the looming danger.
It is my humble view that the labelling on the packaging did not provide adequate indication and warning that this type of feed needed to be mixed first with other components to avoid urea poisoning.
The other important aspect that contributed to the tragedy was the lack of provision of technical advice to the buyer.
If the advice was provided, the buyer did not get the warning and gravity of the danger paused by urea-based feeds if not properly handled. The lesson is, agro-veterinary shops should always employ technical salespersons to deliver informed advice to the buyer, who is invariably a farmer or representing a farmer.
This cannot be a sales job for every Tom and Dick, but agricultural or veterinary-trained persons who will disseminate proper advice to farmers and avoid such calamities. Not every farmer is agriculture trained, so effective messaging and technical advice delivery is key, more so when dealing with dangerous products.
Another important lesson emerging from this unfortunate incident is the lethargy of important institutions such as the consumer watchdog institution, the standards associations body, and farmers’ unions themselves. Their silence on this matter is deafening.
One would have expected a very loud protestation from all those in protection of the farmer but alas. If it was in other worlds, protests from such bodies would be all over the media in protection of the farmer and yet here it’s silent.
Then they wonder why they are shrinking into oblivion. Some of these institutions would not exist today if they were not made mandatory by statutory provisions.
Make no mistake readers, this is no small matter at all.
An elderly lady lost eight cattle — a value of about nine thousand dollars. Then add the trauma of seeing your animals dying from what you brought home at a cost, trying to save them from this drought.
Imagine if gogo is a person with chronic conditions such as hypertension and diabetes as tends to be the case at that age, it’s not a good place to be for her.
Lastly, it is my submission that Fivet, as a big player in the livestock stock feed and drug manufacturing and retail sector, should choose the most humane way of handling this matter and get the affected farmer some reparation, notwithstanding her own culpability.
It is very easy to adopt an aloof position and shield yourself with expense legal fortitude because you have the financial muscle and she doesn’t, but she was your customer.
Uyabonga umntakaMaKhumalo.
n Mhlupheki Dube is a livestock specialist and farmer. He writes in his own capacity. Feedback [email protected] cell 0772851275
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