Red or White Meat: which is healthier? (1)

Statistics from the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (FMARD) say Nigerians eat about 360,000 tonnes of beef a year. This conservative figure however is projected to rise to 1.3 million tonnes per year by 2050 — some 260% increase. Overall quality of either white or red meat however is dependent on a whole lot of factors which may be out of the control of consumers.

However, the medical community encourages people to choose white meat over red meat because of the lower fat content in the former. Nevertheless,

While still studying for his degree in veterinary medicine in 2008, Okan Hembel bought a piece of beef – the hump of a cow at the local market in Jalingo, Taraba State. The aspiring veterinary doctor took this prized cut home in the hope of preparing a delicious meat dish for dinner. Instead of ending in the pot, the whole hump was dumped in a pit.

“When I got home, I sliced the meat and I saw a deposit of antibiotics inside,” Hembel recalled. “There is a particular antibiotic drug which [veterinary doctors] administer to animals, which is whitish in colour. It’s called PenStrep, a combination of Penicillin and Streptomycin. Either of these two antibiotics was responsible for that deposit.”

Antibiotics are substances used for controlling the growth and spread of harmful germs — both in humans and animals. In addition to preventing diseases; they are widely used by the poultry industry to enhance growth rates, boost egg production as well as increase feed efficiency. For instance, it normally takes about eight weeks to raise table birds such as broilers but with the use of antibiotics, these table birds can reach the market in six weeks or less. For any entrepreneurial farmer, the lesser time it takes to raise these birds, the better. Thus, using antibiotic drugs is a big incentive for profit making. The use of antibiotics is, however, not peculiar to poultry farmers; cattle herders use them too.

While antibiotics are quite beneficial for raising disease-free animals in record time, the downside is disheartening: they can enter the food chain when people eat meat from animals that have high levels of antibiotics. To prevent this from happening, farmers are mandated by regulators to adhere strictly to the withdrawal period (printed on the pack) of veterinary drugs before selling their animals.

The withdrawal period is the timeframe between the last dose of antibiotics given to animals and the consumption of such animals or food derived from them such as milk or eggs. Hence the withdrawal period allows the animal’s system to rid itself of the residue of these veterinary drugs.

Although some farmers especially smallholders do not observe these instructions, this is not the biggest challenge in the use of antibiotics. It is the improper application of antibiotics that can cause the greatest danger. Whenever farmers misuse antibiotics — either by using less than is recommended (for cost-cutting measures) or more — it can cause germs to develop genes that resist the effect of these drugs. When this happens, the drugs become ineffective at killing germs which in turn results in antibiotics resistance in humans.

“It has been discovered that there’s transference of resistant genes from animal to human microbiota,” Adebisi Agboola, an animal scientist at the University of Ibadan said.

“Humans are the consumers of these animal products [and] with the residual effects of antibiotics, when people take antibiotics for common infections, it doesn’t work. That becomes a problem and because of that, the European Union (EU) has banned the use of antibiotics as growth promoters in animals since 2006. The health risk of using antibiotics [in animals] is very high.”

Agboola further explained that while Nigeria is yet to ban the use of antibiotics in animal production, there is a gradual move by professional institutions to induce farmers to embrace alternatives like prebiotics and probiotics. One of such institutions is the Nigerian Institute for Animal Science (NIAS) which is coming up with a range of policies and regulations that will ensure that farmers comply with best practices in animal husbandry.

Due to prevailing environmental conditions (such as high humidity and poor sanitation) in Nigeria which predisposes animals to germs, we may not be able to completely do away with antibiotics. Hembel’s experience therefore underlines why food safety should be deemed a matter of national security by the government. And this is particularly worrisome because; as the economic profile of our country rises, the meat consumption per capita of Nigerians will also increase. In fact, it might have started rising.

A 2009/2010 nationwide survey by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) that was published in 2012 put the expenses on red meats (such as beef and mutton) at 2.95% of the total food expenditure for the average household. In comparison, Nigerians spent about 0.58% of their food expenses on poultry and its products (mainly eggs). These figures show that we eat more red meats than the white alternatives. The availability and affordability of beef over chicken, and to a lesser extent, certain cultural and religious practices are the factors responsible for this preference. (Beef is the preferred meat choice for special occasions such as weddings and funerals while mutton is oftentimes reserved for Salah celebrations.)

Hembel could not eat the meat he bought at the market and he still could not get a refund either. After all, he had purchased the meat from a vendor; and the vendor in turn could have sourced for the product from some cattle wholesaler or at the local abattoir. So, where exactly did the bad meat come from?

In my search for answers to how animals are raised and sold in Nigeria, I interviewed a cattle herder in Sokoto and poultry farmer in Ibadan.

Juli Mohammado has spent most of his life rearing cows for sale across Nigeria. From his base in Tambuwal, a local government area in Sokoto State, he sells about 150 cows every Monday to abattoirs and markets as far as Lagos. Mohammado’s herd appeared very healthy; they are fed with wheat, beans shaft and grasses but he told me the cows sometimes suffer from foot and mouth disease, a viral disease that is common in cattle. To prevent his cows from becoming ill, Mohammado vaccinates them against different infectious diseases from time to time.

“Yes, I have doctors from the veterinary [clinic] who come to treat the cows when they are sick. Most of the treatments are through injections.”

After I left Mohammado, I went to inspect two abattoirs — one in Tambuwal and the other in the Sokoto metropolis. The Tambuwal abattoir is actually an al fresco compound without any building at all. Cattle and other animals are usually slaughtered on the ground and their carcasses are then transferred onto a wooden mat made of small bamboo shoots. One of the butchers at the abattoir, Abubakar Maidamma told me they slaughter between three to five cows per day and that if they notice that a cow is sick, they kill it immediately to stop it from dying. Upon this revelation, I bought meat from the abattoir which I later sent to the laboratory for analysis.

When I asked if the abattoir has any veterinarian who checks the cows before they are slaughtered, he exclaimed, “No doctor!”