On behalf of Animals‘ Angels, our team of Taweso is at Kibaha Checkpoint located at the main access road to Dar es Salaam. This is where all animal transports heading to Tanzania’s biggest cattle and goat market as well as to several slaughterhouses must pass and undergo inspection.
Until now, the inspections were limited to stamping the transports’ accompanying documents, but this is going to change now: Animals’ Angels has already visited the checkpoint twice and our team from Taweso will now be on-site regularly. With our focus on loading density, we train the authorities and inspect all passing transports. Nearly all of them are overloaded. The animals have no room to move preventing them from taking a comfortable position. Furthermore, the tight squeeze makes it nearly impossible to supply them with food or water.
In total, Taweso visited Kibaha checkpoint eight times in February 2017. Tirelessly, they measure each transport vehicle to calculate the permitted loading density which is too high in nearly all vehicles. We know that it takes patience and time to change the situation, as well as a lot of persuading and supporting the authorities so that they will confidently take a stand for the animals and apply current animal welfare legislation. But our team on-site points out the existing problems, and with perseverance we want to and will achieve improvement for the animals. A first success we have already achieved: The checkpoint now regularly sends activity reports to the Ministry of Agriculture, also naming the issues in animal transports found on-site. This way, the ministry will be informed about the existing shortcomings by its own authorities.
