Township consumers who buy live chickens on street corners run the risk of contracting diarrhoea, skin ulcerations, abscesses and even typhoid fever.
The health risk emanates from factory farms that dispose of old livestock by selling it to township vendors.
Compassion in World Farming South Africa, an NGO that advocates the humane treatment of farm animals, recently took four randomly selected chickens sold live to residents in Khayelitsha, near Cape Town, to the University of the Western Cape for testing.
The tests revealed that the chickens were contaminated by a range of disease-causing bacteria.
A senior microbiologist from the university, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said “all these bacteria can cause serious illness, even death. Moreover, even if the bacteria in question were eliminated by cooking, sometimes the toxins they secrete are not sensitive to heat and they, too, can cause serious illness, even death.
“The trouble is that the selling of live animals to disadvantaged communities for slaughter is an unregulated industry, and there is no responsibility on anyone to ensure the health of the animals sold in these communities.”
The microbiologist said she believed that factory farming of animals had to give way to more humane farming — for the sake of humanity, human health and from the economic point of view too.
Antibiotics are routinely used on factory farms both to promote growth and to decrease the risk of disease outbreaks. “Huge amounts of money are spent on antibiotics to prop up animals on factory farms. And the result is that we are destroying the life-saving miracle of antibiotics,” she said.
Gwen Dumo, a community health worker in Khayelitsha, confirmed that many of her patients complained of seemingly inexplicable diarrhoea and skin ulceration problems.
Louise van der Merwe, a representative for Compassion in World Farming, says for 15 years her organisation has been fighting the sale of animals no longer considered productive by the factory farms to poor communities.
“The animals involved are the end-of-lay chickens, the broiler parent stock, pigs and unwanted new-born male calves. Now it is even more apparent that the sale of live animals for informal slaughter must stop, for the sake of the health of the very people they are meant to feed.”