Francistown — Following an animated response to farmers to bring more cattle for slaughtering, the Botswana Meat Commission's slaughterhouse in Francistown is throttled and garrotted - apparently by far too much meat.

"Cattle have been coming after our recent campaign," says Dr Motshudi Raborokgwe, the Chief Executive Officer of the BMC. "Our major problem now is associated with the plant, which has not been performing very well."

Raborokgwe says there are serious problems with the industrial weighing scale, the cooker, and the boiler.

The cooker is for beef by-products, the boiler generates the steam necessary for sterilising the meat, and the weighing scale is for ... well, weighing the beasts!

The plant in Francistown has a killing capacity of 350 per day. But because the animals have put a spanner and a tough hoof in the works, production costs have been escalating partly due to overtime claims by workers who duly report for duty every day, only to have next to nothing to do.

" Because we have been killing about 100 cattle per day, it means that work that should be done in a day now takes three days or more. Because of the reduced capacity of the cooker to produce enough by-products like carcass meal, people have to work overtime to catch up with production demands," Raborokgwe wails.

"We expect an expert from South Africa to come and fix the weighing scale, which was bought in Australia. The South African expert will have to adjust it so that it can be managed from here, rather than waiting for experts from Australia."

As for the cooker, which is also from 'Down Under', the abattoir has to wait at least 68 weeks before it can hope to have it restored and production levels back to normal.

Not least because in the meantime, the slaughterhouse has been accumulating a stockpile of 'beastly' by-products by the hundred per day.

It has to be sixty-eight weeks because the cooker's mechanic has to be as original an Australian as the kangaroo, probably carrying his tools in an underbelly pouch!

But who is to blame when too many beasts go through a plant? "A large and good kill recently, with less time for shut down to repair the plant," says CEO Raborokgwe.