By Wezi Tjaronda
WINDHOEK
Namibia’s quality meat production has earned the country a visit from the renowned Maredo Restaurant Group. The group was in the country last week on a scouting mission.
According to Meatco, the group has identified Namibia as a potential source of beef supply because they do not want to limit themselves to one source of beef supply.
Due to this, Meatco’s Manager: Communications and Marketing, Uschi Ramakutla, said the meat company is looking at possibilities to supply beef to their steakhouses.
An eight-member delegation from the Restaurant Group was in the country to see whether the company could source meat from here.
The group, with 60 restaurants, 56 in Germany and four in Austria, specialises in serving its clients naturally produced meat.
The delegation visited two of Meatco’s abattoirs, Windhoek and Okahandja, two farms and feeding pens and also met the Chairman of the Livestock Producer’s Organisation Ryno van der Merwe and Namibia Agricultural Union (NAU) Manager: Commodities, Harald Marggraff.
Marggraff told New Era yesterday the delegation wanted to get a perspective of how meat is produced in the country for them to source Namibian meat for their restaurants.
“They may consider importing meat from us,” he said, adding that the group wants to get the right quality of meat or naturally produced meat that consumers require.
Namibia’s cattle feed on the veldt, unlike elsewhere where the animals are fed on bone and carcass meal and in feedlots.
Marggraff said some countries use hormones for quick growth and bone and carcass meal, which brought about risks of mad cow disease.
“It was important for them to know that our beef is produced naturally, free of hormones and antibiotics, not bone and carcass meal feed and that we have a traceability system in place,” the newsletter said.
The officials visited the two beef farms to get a picture of the circumstances under which meat production takes place, according to NAU newsletter.
The beef that Maredo serves is sourced from Argentina, Uruguay and South Brazil, where cattle have freedom of movement and nourish themselves on natural fodder without artificial additives.
Information from the group’s website says Maredo beef is selected according to strict internal processes under constant controls and is examined by the restaurant’s own quality managers.
The newsletter added that the delegation was impressed that Namibia is the only country in Africa that has such a system.
Namibia has a livestock identification and traceability system in place, which was rolled out last year to ensure the credibility of food safety guarantees that the country gives to its citizens and its export markets.
There are fears that with globalisation, there are increased risks of not only accidental but also intentional spread of diseases and in this case, a traceability system would react quickly to outbreaks.
Among others, the system will require, for example, tagging of cattle leaving a farm; livestock having a correctly filled-in departure register; and the tagged animals bearing ear tags to be supplied from state veterinary offices.
The system is required to trace back and forward individual cattle and groups of small livestock throughout the production chain from the farmer to the auction pens.
Maredo is currently pursuing a diversification strategy with the aim of winning new clients and generating further growth and is thus becoming increasingly active in Eastern Europe and Arab states.
Its vision is to become one of Germany’s 10 largest companies in the astronomy trade.