The order to fire 6,400 live chicks smuggled from Kenya five years ago, according to Tanzanian President Samia Suluhu Hassan, was incorrect.
The chicks, which were seized in the border town of Namanga, were burned in November 2017 on the pretext that they had been smuggled into Tanzania.
The president claimed that five years after the torching, the incident almost damaged the long-standing ties between the two trading partners.
“It was not a good way to handle such imports. Even chickens have the right to live,” she said when she addressed lawyers from the region.
Animal rights organisations and members of the business community from the two neighbouring countries both criticised the action.
On suspicion of being illegal imports, 6,400 day-old chicks were seized at the well-known border town between the two states.
As Kenya formally objected to what it called “a policy shift that condones aggressive conduct against Kenyan residents,” the situation almost turned into a diplomatic spat.
Kenya’s Foreign Ministry summoned the then-High Commissioner of Tanzania to Kenya, Pindi Chana, to explain “the unilateral move.”
The Ministry of Livestock Development and Fisheries claimed at the time that the purpose of burning live chicks was to stop the spread of avian flu.
Other Tanzanian officials stated the shipment of the chicks was not documented, while Kenya complained that no cases of bird flu had been registered within its borders.
Prior to the burning of Kenyan poultry in November 2017, Tanzanian authorities auctioned off 1,325 head of Kenyan livestock.
The animals were taken away in October 2017 while they were grazing on the Tanzanian side of the shared border and belonged to Kenyan herders.
The chicken breeders in Arusha who imported the charred chicks apparently came from Kenya.
Animal rights organizations in Tanzania sharply criticized the action, claiming it was the wrong course of action to stop such shipments.
Tanzania Animal Welfare Society executive director Thomas Kahema said there were more effective ways to tackle the problem.
“It would have been better to return the chicks to Kenya than to burn them,” he told The Citizen.
“It was a major breakthrough after I visited Nairobi where we made business commitments with former President Uhuru Kenyatta,” she said.
