We are at Madaba Campus of the Agricultural College LITA in southern Tanzania. As part of our animal welfare workshop, we visit the local cattle market with 40 students and two teachers. The aim of the excursion is to give the students an impression of how an animal market works and to give them the opportunity to learn as much as possible about their future work as animal welfare inspectors.
About 200 cattle are offered for sale at the market. The handling of the animals is rough and the students are visibly shocked by the conditions on site. As part of an exercise we ask them to select a single animal. A group of students choose a bull. They call him Paake and describe him as stressed and anxious. If Paake could speak, he would wish, according to the students, that "he would be fed and watered. Moreover, he does not want to be beaten, but to feel comfortable and safe in his environment."
We are happy about how committed and motivated the students are in exploring and critically discussing the cattle market. Together with their animal welfare teacher and our support, they want to work for improvements. Their sympathy with bull Paake and their numerous enquiries give us hope that a new, critical generation of control authorities will be growing up here. That would be urgently necessary, because for the animals in Tanzania a strict implementation and application of the animal protection law is long overdue!
