Experts in move to promote cane rat as food item

 

By Sturmius Mtweve The Citizen Reporter

In Summary

The initiative intends to not only help in improving the health and social welfare of the community, but also to protect the highly threatened biodiversity.

 

Dar es Salaam. Agricultural scientists are on the verge to encourage and promote farmers in various parts of the country to start keeping rats in their homes for nutritional, commercial purposes and environmental protection.

The initiative intends to not only help in improving the health and social welfare of the community, but also to protect the highly threatened biodiversity.

According to a project that was pioneered by the Sokoine University of Agriculture (Sua), scientists from the institution introduced cane rats keeping projects to the communities living around Uluguru Mountains after discovering environmental destruction caused by cane rats hunters.

Prof Loth Mlungu, from Sua, department of pest management told The Citizen on Sunday that in 2009 they decided to introduce cane rats keeping training to farmers for nutritional purposes, environmental protection, encouraging progressive hunting and protecting the biodiversity.

The programme, according to Prof Mulungu, was first introduced in the country in 2009 after discovering that people around Uluguru Mountains in Morogoro had regularly set fire on the bushes as they searched the rats for their delicacy.

“Eating rats in Tanzania is not a new phenomenon. People and communities from different parts of the country have been and are some still hunting these wild animals for nutritional purposes,” said Prof Mulungu

Cane rats, also known as “Ndezi” in Swahili have been proved to be a good source of cholesterol-free proteins and farmers should be looking at keeping and eating them.

The scientist said the university is still looking to initiate another project that will help more farmers in the country adopt the system –which has proven to be of high value to both human beings and the environment.

“We are advising farmers to keep these animals in their homes because this will help in protecting the environment and save the time that they would have been spending hunting them in bushes,” he noted

The three year project, he said was sponsored by DelPHE through the British Council –and ran from 2009 to 2011 and has attracted interest of many people in various places who now wish to keep the animals. “Cane rats range in body length from 35 to 60 centimetres, they commonly weigh between six and seven kilograms in captivity, but can attain weight up to 10 kilograms depending on the nature and location where they are,” added Mulungu

Apart from being eaten as delicacy in some African countries, cane rats are also a pest species on many crops.

Professionally, the rodents can be captured from the wild by using dragnets that will keep them in captivity without injuring them –and it needs some training. The scientist told this paper that rearing cane rats is very common in West Africa where people have traditionally captured wild cane rats and fattened them in their homes –and has so far attracted international market –a trend he said that Tanzania also need to follow.