Experts link ARV use for pigs to rising feed prices

The Agriculture ministry has attributed the use of antiretroviral (ARV) drugs in animals to the costly animal feeds on Uganda’s market.

Mr Stephen Magume, the principal agricultural extension and skills management officer in the ministry, said higher animal feed prices prompted farmers to use Aids medicines to enable animals and chicken to grow faster and fatter.

“Of recent the price of maize bran and soya has been skyrocketing to the extent that at one time a kilogramme of mixed food elements with maize bran had risen to as high as Shs1,600, which is not affordable to an ordinary farmer,” he told Daily Monitor yesterday.

Mr Magume said poor quality feeds on the market which do not enable animals and poultry to mature faster or fatten had added to farmers’ urgency to misuse ARVs.

“It is not a good act at all. The mistaken belief is that when they feed them (birds and pigs) on ARVs they will fatten and grow very fast and traders are usually interested in big size pigs or chicken,” he said.

Uganda is currently hit by shortage of feeds, Mr Mugume said, without providing import and intake deficit figures, but added that they are now focusing on food formulation.

Dr Yazidhi Bamutaze, the deputy principal of the College of Agriculture and Environmental Sciences at Makerere University, attributed the use of ARVs to treat and fatten animal and birds with Aids drugs on farmers’ frustration over high costs of feeds.

He condemned the misuse of ARVs, and called for research into more feasible and safer solutions for farmers.

“We [academics] in research should go to levels [of innovation] to prove to farmers that without concentration [on use of ARVs], one can still get better [animal and poultry] yields,” Dr Bamutaze said.

Earlier, Agriculture ministry’s Magume disclosed that they had accelerated training of farmers on feed formulation --- uniform mixture of carbohydrates, proteins, vitamins and additives such as salt --- at the farm level.

The government, he noted, is training farmers and agricultural extension officers on post-harvest handling to guarantee high quality of farm outputs “because we are aware that formulating animal feeds with contaminated after-harvest feed products will all the same affect animal health”.

Such livestock in the long run will die or consumers of products from such animals will suffer health hazards, he said.

The interviews with these experts followed the Wednesday revelation by National Drug Authority that it was in the know of misuse of ARVs to treat and fatten pigs and chicken but kept quiet for a decade in order to safeguard the economy and not to alarm the public. The admission has triggered a nationwide condemnation because NDA is mandated to regulate the use of drugs.