When I closed … people were asking ‘where is the donkey meat?’ – Owner
By Chrispin Inambao
GOBABIS
The only butchery in Gobabis selling donkey sausage, steak and other juicy pieces cut from this beast of burden, has closed down with its owner accusing overzealous health officials of driving him from what was once a thriving business.
The business, whose clients were mainly blacks from Epukiro and Windhoek, closed doors acrimoniously in March, less than a year after it had opened.
At the height of this undertaking, businessman Rynier van der Watt said he averaged N$1 200 daily from donkey steak, mince and sausages because his clients could afford the N$10 per kg charged for the beast’s meat.
Van der Watt, who now sells cheap coffins for a living, says he used to make a clean profit of N$13 000 each month from the butchery that also sold wild game meat products.
“When I closed down, people were asking ‘where is the donkey meat?’ I am very disappointed the place was closed down because people cannot afford beef,” he said.
While donkey sausages, steak and mince sold for N$10 per kg on average, beef sausages cost N$30 per kg and consumers pay even more for other prime cuts.
White Namibians who counted among his clientele mainly bought the donkey meat for their pets though the butcher said he occasionally ate some of the donkey meat himself.
Van der Watt says unlike beef and other meats, donkey meat has much lower cholesterol and can provide a better alternative of protein for gout sufferers.
The aggrieved businessman feels it is not only consumers who’ve lost out as a result of the closure because now a handful of former butchery employees are without jobs as well.
Though the town’s health officer Austin John Luckhoff was accused by the businessman of constantly harassing the ex-butcher, the former denied these allegations, saying he was only doing his job of ensuring the public was protected and rules were adhered to.
“Donkeys should be slaughtered at an approved abattoir,” said the health inspector.
He said he was not the sort of person who harassed people.
“We didn’t force him out of business,” he told New Era in an interview.
His subordinate Ronel Omega Auchab, the meat examiner at the town, also explained that the businessman flouted laid-down procedures because he slaughtered the animals on the farms where he had bought them before transporting them to Gobabis.
But rules guiding butcheries clearly state the animals should be inspected while they are alive by health officials to ensure they are free from disease such as foot-and-mouth and anthrax and to reduce stress and rigor mortis in the animals selected for slaughter.
He said in as much as there was no law prohibiting the slaughter of donkeys in Namibia, the meat had to receive a clean bill of health mainly as a control measure to avoid unfit meat entering the market, “as all livestock have to be examined for disease”.
“No one confiscated his donkey meat; no one forced him out of business; in fact we were surprised to find that the place was closed,” said Auchab, who added that the donkey butchery was free to operate just like the seven other butcheries selling beef and venison.
There is also speculation that the butchery could have closed in part due to what some sources at the town claimed was a lack of constant supply of donkeys for slaughter.
It is also believed donkey meat is a delicacy in South Africa where there is a big abattoir that slaughters donkeys and horses for the pot.
Like frog – another exotic local delicacy – this meat is said to have a market in Europe.