Game farming to be regulated like livestock farming

By Melissa Wray

The department of agriculture recently published two policy documents that seek to regulate game farming in South Africa, subjecting it to “similar control measures as livestock farming”. In the documents, the department announced its intention of producing norms and standards that govern" the provisioning of artificial water supply systems, fencing considerations, infrastructure and management practices” as well as a number of other issues that could have far-reaching consequences for game farms across the country.

 The policy documents also state that in January 2007 they intend to survey all the game farms in South Africa, and register them in a database. Although intended “to cover all the current anomalies and shortfalls hampering the development of a viable game farming sector" in South Africa, the publication of the policy documents appears to have caught numerous role players in the game farming industry off guard, including the government's own research organization, the Agricultural Research Council (ARC).

The ARC has a Range and Forage Institute, devoted to studying veld and pasture related issues, but has been forced to ask for an extension to the deadline for public ready for submission to the department of agriculture, one official said, “The policy looks quite thin – it needs quite a lot of comments." The Grassland Society of South Africa (GSSA), which devotes itself to “the science and practice of wise use of natural and cultivated grazing resources” also learnt of the veld policy late, although the policy document announces that “the GSSA has a pivotal role to play as a strategic partner” and“close cooperation with GSSA is therefore of critical importance."

Gary van den Berg, vice president of Wildlife Ranching South Africa (WRSA), an organisation which is mentioned extensively in the documents and dubs itself“the mouthpieceof the wildlife industry in South Africa", also seemed unaware of the publication of the specificdocuments. Headded that WRSAhad been liasing with the department of agriculture, but that he believed that there was a lot morework to be done beforeany document could be published.

Although there is some overlap between issues contained in the game farming policy and the recently published norms and standards intended to regulate the hunting industry (which by necessity involves game farming), no acknowledgements made by the department of agriculture of the legislation published by the department of environmental affairs. The Agricultural Research Council and the Grassland Society intend to submit their comments to the department of agriculture by the end of August, but how much impact their comments will have is unknown, as the department listed September 2006 as the date of the publication for the final policy.

Although many officials within the ARC declined to comment on the policy documents until they had their official comment on both the policy for game farming and the range and forage (veld) policy because it appears that they were not initially aware of the publication of the documents.