The Minister of Trade and Industry, Jean-Chrysostome Ngabitsinze, and the Minister of Local Government, Jean Claude Musabyimana, are expected to appear in the lower chamber of Parliament in the afternoon of October 17, to respond to concerns over slaughtering facilities that fall short of standards, according to a communication from the legislature.

The two ministers were summoned by the Lower House on January 18, after its plenary sitting adopted a resolution to formally call for their presence to provide explanations to the issues in question – which revolve around meat safety concerns.

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Members of Parliament expressed concerns over the quality of meat Rwandans consume as they pointed out that some meat was sold without being thoroughly tested for diseases and contaminations.

The MPs, among others, pointed to an issue of lack of hygiene in slaughtering facilities.

They indicated that the Auditor General’s report of 2021/22 exposed that none of the 25 slaughtering facilities that were checked met all the requirements including buildings, equipment, and employees, among others. This issue, it said, could have adverse effects on the safety of meat.

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According to an assessment made by the Parliamentary Committee on Land, Agriculture, Livestock, and Environment, it was also observed that 36 out of 47 slaughtering facilities did not provide the required documents and stamps to confirm that the meat they sold was tested (for safety purposes).

Again, it was realised that 15 out 28 of the meat transporters inspected did not have the licence allowing them to do the job, which led to poor meat transportation in substandard containers, it added.

According to the National Meat Value Chain Strategy 2022-2027 final report, published on October 2022 by the Ministry of Trade and Industry (MINICOM), as indicated in the recent Meat Value Chain (MVC) Mapping and Gap Analysis (MINICOM, 2022), local abattoirs were facing a number of crucial challenges hindering the meat sector to become competitive on both local and international markets.

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The challenges include inadequate abattoir business model; inadequate cold chain mechanism (to ensure that meat is safely transported in a temperature-controlled supply chain such as through refrigerated containers), and issues of compliance to safety and quality standards of meat and meat products.

Others are noncompliance or, inappropriate/lack of good slaughtering practices, food/meat safety system that is not always effective in protecting the public health against outbreaks of infectious and foodborne diseases; absence of a food traceability system operational at the national level, as well as issue of abattoir certification.

Available data from districts and other key informants highlight an important stake of slaughters and meat trading in the national meat value chain, where at least 580 operators are active across the country, as per the National Meat Value Chain Strategy 2022-2027.

This sub-sector, it showed, included 107 slaughtering facilities, 400 butchers, 52 cross-border meat traders, eight meat transporters, eight meat exporters, and five meat processors.