Pork sales soar as ARV concerns come to fore

The stunning revelation of anti-retroviral (ARV) drug misuse to treat or fatten pigs and chicken has not shaken the appetite for the products, local dealers have indicated.

“Business is going on normally,” the operator of Kampala-based Pork Junction, Deogracias Agenonga, told Monitor on Friday, adding, “As someone who sells pork every day, I have also been hearing from several people that fatty parts of pork help people with HIV/Aids, a lot.”

According to the United Nations food agency, FAO, the consumption rate of pork is very high in Uganda.

Ugandans, on average, eat 141 million kilogrammes of pork and 62 million kilogrammes of chicken, translating into 3.5kg and 1.5kg per capita pork and bird consumption, respectively.

At Verse One Pork Joint, Isaac Kalani—the operator, who sells up to 100kg of pork on Saturdays—also said sales figures are in the normal range despite increased warnings about ARV-laced pork and chicken in the market.

“When we get pigs from slaughterhouses, the doctors check them. I don’t think if a pig had some issues, it could be brought to a slaughterhouse; maybe those who buy directly from farmers get pigs that are raised that way,” Kalani said.

Tests for ARV contamination are complex and may not be determined during normal assessment of meat or pork by animal health scientists. 

Kalani said: “Those who know farmers who do those things (give animals ARVs) don’t go to slaughterhouses. Those are places where you find pork is cheaper. A kilogramme of raw pork in those places can be as low as Shs7,000, but I buy mine at Shs13,000.”

Mr Ronald Walugembe, a Wakiso-based operator of Pork Tastes Uganda, also said talks about ARVs-laced products is one of the least concerns to them.

“Those things of ARVs [misuse by farmers] have not just emerged. They have been there for quite some time, but sales of pork are majorly determined by the financial status of people,” he said, adding, “People eat pork as a luxury or when they are drinking. They don’t [usually] eat pork because they are hungry. People are struggling financially, and this has been affecting sales over time.”

Public outrage
Concerns about ARV-laced animal products have increased this week following a heated discussion between Parliament’s Committee on HIV/Aids and the National Drug Authority (NDA). Information from the NDA, researchers, and farmers, indicates that the misuse of ARV drugs as treatment and fattener for pigs and broiler chicken has persisted in Uganda, even though it was reported as early as 2013.

ARVs are specifically made for treating people with HIV/Aids and the biggest chunk of the medicines used by around 1.2 million people in the country are bought by donors.

Failure of the drug regulator and the Agriculture ministry to tame the growing practice infuriated lawmakers and a section of the public.

This followed a submission by Mr Amos Atumanya, a senior drug inspector at NDA, on Wednesday that “whereas we have known about that issue for some time, we are taking some measures without necessarily having to alarm the whole country.”

The dismay and anger were intensified by warnings from researchers that consuming pork or chicken from animals fed on ARVs increases the risk of drug resistance amid other possible health complications. This is more concerning, especially in a country where 1.4 million people live with HIV.

During the Wednesday meeting, MPs Joel Leku (Terego West, NRM) and Mr Polycarp Ogwari (Agule, Ind) criticised the Authority for not informing the country about the issue.

“It is a disappointment when you discovered early enough that we are here discussing the same thing. We believe you should have informed the country,” Mr Ogwari said.

Following the broadcast of the proceedings in Parliament by local and international media houses, the NDA, the Agriculture ministry, and National Medical Stores have come under intense pressure to explain why the vice persisted.

On Thursday, Mr Abiaz Rwamwiri, the NDA spokesperson, defended the drug regulator and Mr Atumanya, saying media reports on submissions by the inspector were “incomplete.”

Mr Rwamwiri said they have been fighting the vice and sensitising farmers. He added that seven people have been arrested in connection with the illegal possession and sale of ARV drugs, one of the sources which they suspect the drugs are ending up in the wrong hands of commercial feed sellers.

Deep-seated problem
Research reports from Makerere University indicate that besides the HIV-infected farmers sharing their drugs with pigs, some commercial animal feeds are also adulterated with ARVs. This essentially means dealers access drugs from a supplier.

Speaking in an interview on Thursday, Mr Rwamwiri said of those arrested, “three have been remanded to Luzira [prison] and four are [in detention at] Jinja Road Police Station.”

“Two weeks ago, we arrested an enrolled nurse at Nakawuka Health Centre III [in Wakiso District] and the accomplices with several boxes of anti-retroviral drugs. This week, we arrested seven suspects in Kampala with over 21 boxes of the government of Uganda [labelled] drugs including ARVs,” Mr Rwamwiri said.

“As NDA, we are not looking away. What we are doing is to employ the best intervention that will not cause unnecessary panic and this is the standard [practice] globally. We look at the level of risk and communicate appropriately,” he added.  

National Medical Stores (NMS) management also said the drugs being misused are not coming from them. NMS supplies hospitals where patients pick up drugs.

Our analysis of studies done in 11 districts by researchers from Makerere University between 2019 and 2021 found that somewhere from eight percent to 27.5 percent of the pigs and chickens are fed on ARVs.

One of the researchers, Dr Hussein Oria, a lecturer at Makerere University department of pharmacy, told Monitor that the farmers are involved in this unethical and dangerous practice for economic gains.

“Farmers use this product (ARV) because they are looking at fast growth and also getting quick returns. Their belief is that these products cause weight gain in humans and so it will likely cause weight gain in animals, making them get heavier animals and get more returns,” he said.

Dr Oria said since there is an amount of the residue of the drug that remains in the animal, consumption of the meat increases the risk of drug resistance. 

“If organisms (infectious agents) are exposed to very low levels of a drug, then it cannot do anything to destroy those organisms, but it gives them time to develop mechanisms to dodge those drugs,” he added.

Global situation 

Although the revelation about the dangerous practice this week stirred the public and raised concerns beyond the country’s borders, different research reports show that the practice is not unique to Uganda. 

According to information from FAO, “pigs are exposed to the greatest range of growth promoters”, with one of the drugs used in the United States of America indicated for cancer and HIV treatment.

“In the United States of America, for example, pigs are exposed to groups of antibiotics, which include drugs like penicillins, erythromycin and tetracycline. All these groups have members which are used to treat infections in humans,” information from FAO website reads.

The information is based on the analysis of two microbiologists from the United Kingdom’s University of Leeds, Peter Hughes and John Heritage.

“Pigs in the USA are exposed to a range of other compounds intended for growth promotion. These include bacitracin (used in human beings to treat wounds and pneumonia), quinoxalines (used for treating bacterial infection, cancer and HIV infections)  flavophospholipol, pleuromutilins and virginiamycin and arsenic compounds,” the information reads further.

In their recommendation for the best way to handle the problem, the microbiologists said the best alternative to antibiotic growth promoters is a “general improvement of conditions for animals that produce our food.”

“Medically important antibiotics must be prohibited from use in a growth promotional role as a matter of immediacy,” the recommendations read.

Unfortunately, the scientists noted, reform can be slow and extremely costly. 
“In order to start a reformation of the industry as a whole, it’s essential that attitudes to the use of antibiotic growth promoters be changed,” they recommended.

They added: “While the greatest threat to the continued use of antibiotics comes from human medicine, selection of resistance is a problem that affects everyone. It matters very little to someone whose antibiotic treatment is failing if selection of the resistant strain resulted from clinical overuse of the antibiotic or from other sources.”