From Bush to Butchery

Published on July 22, 2024

In 2020, the harvest, trade and use of wild animal meat was legalized in Tanzania under the Game Meat Selling Regulations (GMSR), a mechanism designed to counter poaching and bushmeat trafficking while at the same time create alternative wild sources of protein and food security, improve employment opportunities and income and support community-based conservation initiatives. TRAFFIC’s report From Bush to Butchery analyses the impact, gaps and opportunities of Tanzania’s new regulations from conservation, traceability, community, and economic perspectives.

Tanzania is home to wild herds of buffalo, wildebeest, hartebeest, and impala that have been consumed for meat by generations of indigenous communities. In 2019, Tanzania’s late President called on the country’s authorities to establish a mechanism that will allow Tanzanian’s to access wild meat, counter rampant poaching and illegal bushmeat trade through a pioneering set of national laws. By early 2020, the Game Meat Selling Regulations (GMSR) – new legislation for the legal consumption and production of wild meat – had come into force.

TRAFFIC’s report From Bush to Butchery analyses the impact, gaps and opportunities of Tanzania’s new regulations from conservation, traceability, community, and economic perspectives. TRAFFIC used a multi-sectoral One Health approach to engage wildlife, livestock, and public health officials from district level up to national agencies as the project's foundation for developing practical recommendations around how to ensure sustainable consumption and production with respect to wild meat trade. Given its potential for application in other African countries facing similar issues, TRAFFIC’s report adds to ongoing collaboration with local authorities with a set of evidence-based insights to help guide future improvements in Tanzania and beyond.

While the GMSR are ambitious in scope, they hold the potential to trailblaze similar approaches that could be adopted elsewhere - law enforcement, monitoring of hunting and trade, safety inspections, and public awareness need to be stepped up.If successfully applied, the GMSR hold the potential to holistically address threats to both people and wildlife, connecting issues such as sustainable consumption and production, poaching, zoonotic and other food borne diseases transmission, climate change, poverty, sustainable development, and alternative livelihoods.

Sustainable, safe, and legal supply of wild meat involves actors across the domestic supply chain, starting with regulated sourcing from resident and tourist hunting. For the process to succeed, sourcing should only take place once the relevant wildlife authorities have issued hunting permits that comply with precise wildlife management stipulations. Poaching for bushmeat (illegally sourced and traded meat) remains a legacy problem for Tanzania as it grapples with balancing local subsistence needs with wildlife conservation and sustainable development.