CHALLENGES OF REFORMING NATIONAL VETERINARY

LEGISLATION: EXPERIENCE OF UGANDA

Dr Kauta NicholasChief veterinary officer

Uganda1st international conference on

veterinary legislation 7th -9th Dec 2010 Djerba -Tunisia

Presentation plan

• Introduction

• Drivers of legislative reform

• Limitations to effective reforms.

• Conclusions

Introduction

• First veterinary legislation was introduced in 1918 – the Animal diseases Act

• Major improvements in 1964 (six more Acts)• Since 1964 changes have mainly been

amendments of existing laws. • Explicit Food safety legislation was introduced

in 1964 and is taken care of by different ministries

Drivers of Legislative reforms

Prevailing environment

• Socio-political• economic,• cultural, • technological

Present status• Production system dominated by subsistence

production (over 80%). Only hides and skins are exported.

• Diverse and regional differences in use of animal resources.

• Weak law reform capacity• Small national budgets• Many competing enterprises• Limited infrastructure for value addition to

animal products.

Present status cont’d

Veterinary services have until recently targeted • Improved animal production (through better

health) – food security.• Public health (zoonosis)And not• International trade (requiring more

commercial than subsistence production) • Low human development index

Current status

Success stories • fish export to EU• Export of crop products eg coffee, tea to EU

(eurepGap)• Access to EU for honeyPlanned programmes• Preparation to access EU and other markets

with beef

Future prospects

• High potential for participation in global trade in animal products

• A lot of work needs to be done to realize this.

Challenges

Socio- economic- political issuesFundamental difference• Developed countries – internal markets:

internal consumer demands • Developing countries - external markets:

external consumer demands• Food value of animals is only a small part of

the total value of the animals in many communities (traction and media of exchange of values dominates).

Socio-economic- political cont’d

• Cost benefit analysis is often biased towards animal product value e.g meat and milk

• Yet the benefits are analyzed from different perspectives by different communities.

• Who is perceived to benefit?• Why are we considering export of meat when

we do not have enough for ourselves?

Political considerations

• Difficulties in pushing through contentious laws which create precedents. e.g compensation policy is shunned –

• why veterinary diseases?• What about others?

Commercialized production vs subsistence production

• Food safety – historically was a response to an increasing number of people who depended more on marketed food than domestically prepared food.

• 80% of animals kept on low input – low output production systems serving subsistence needs.

• This weakens our augment and competitiveness because a small amount of the food goes through the food safety web.

Constrained financial resources and resultant competition

• Budgets are fixed over a long period of time with limited flexibility

• Short term (1 to 2 yrs), medium term (3-5 yrs) and long term (6 -15 yrs)

• Budgetary ceiling mean competitions for limited resources with resources being reallocated as different stakeholders argue cases out.

Investments challenges

• Investments to meet the demands of new laws.• In the face of small budgets investments are slow

and protracted.• Yet governments are aiming for quick returns to

investment.• Loss of interest in the face of other competing

values.• Under the circumstances the private sector must

fill in the gap

Competition

• In the wake of competitions, benefits from implementation of veterinary legislation are subject to deliberate misinterpretation and deliberate misrepresentation.

• These tools are often used in competitions for resource allocation.

Major challenge

• Use of other institutions to drive our agenda has proved difficult (bureaucracy).

The role of Ministry of Finance

• In Policy formulation the Ministry of Finance is the clearing house for policy proposals to Cabinet. Is a filter.

• Technical in the cost - benefit analysis• Lack of professional representation at critical

stages in the process which opens the way for misrepresentation due to lack of adequate background information or biases.

Harmonization with other legislation

• harmonization of veterinary legislation with other legislation is a demanding process.

• We are locked in a battle as to which ministry should take the lead on food safety in the face of farm to fork approach

OIE support

• PVS (Performance, Vision & Strategy) tool – 2007

• Veterinary legislation – mission received in Uganda 2010. In principle we are due to sign MoU with OIE. Process going through our legal departments.

• Thank OIE for this support.

Conclusions• Veterinary legislation needs to be updated in Uganda.• However the process is manned at different stages by

persons with little supportive information and this must be addressed

• Legal advisory units should be established under the veterinary authority on fulltime basis.

• The resources needed to review veterinary legislation may not be enough under public expenditure. Support is required from other sources including private sectors.

• Zoning of production must be considered .

.

Thank you