Street-level diplomacy and local enforcement for meat safety in northern Tanzania: knowledge, pragmatism and trust

Abstract

Background With increasing demand for red meat in Tanzania comes heightened potential for zoonotic infections in animals and humans that disproportionately affect poor communities. A range of frontline government employees work to protect public health, providing services for people engaged in animal-based livelihoods (livestock owners and butchers), and enforcing meat safety and food premises standards. In contrast to literature which emphasises the inadequacy of extension support and food safety policy implementation in low- and middle-income countries, this paper foregrounds the ‘street-level diplomacy’ deployed by frontline actors operating in challenging contexts. Methods This research is based on semi-structured interviews with 61 government employees, including livestock extension officers/meat inspectors and health officers, across 10 randomly-selected rural and urban wards. Results Frontline actors combined formal and informal strategies including the leveraging of formal policy texts and relationships with other state employees, remaining flexible and recognising that poverty constrained people’s ability to comply with health regulations. They emphasised the need to work with livestock keepers and butchers to build their knowledge to self-regulate and to work collaboratively to ensure meat safety. Remaining adaptive and being hesitant to act punitively unless absolutely necessary cultivated trust and positive relations, making those engaged in animal-based livelihoods more open to learning from and cooperating with extension officers and inspectors. This may result in higher levels of meat safety than might be the case if frontline actors stringently enforced regulations. Conclusion The current tendency to view frontline actors’ partial enforcement of meat safety regulations as a failure obscures the creative and proactive ways in which they seek to ensure meat safety in a context of limited resources. Their application of ‘street-level diplomacy’ enables them to be sensitive to local socio-economic realities, to respect local social norms and expectations and to build support for health safety interventions when necessary. More explicitly acknowledging the role of trust and positive state-society relations and the diplomatic skills deployed by frontline actors as a formal part of their inspection duties offers new perspectives and enhanced understandings on the complicated nature of their work and what might be done to support them. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (10.1186/s12889-019-7067-8) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Meat Safety in Northern Tanzania: Inspectors' and Slaughter Workers' Risk Perceptions and Management

“…Furthermore, as "street-level bureaucrats, " these government staff have considerable discretion, often bringing their own values, priorities and understandings to bear when implementing policy (33,34). This has been framed both as problematic divergence from high-level policy goals, but also, as creative and necessary to operate effectively in complex, messy realities-especially in the face of limited resources (35,36). Slaughter workers also have substantial influence over meat safety given their daily activities of slaughter and dressing, and based on their own knowledge, concerns and priorities, deploy their own forms of risk-based decision-making.…”

Meat Safety in Tanzania’s Value Chain: Experiences, Explanations and Expectations in Butcheries and Eateries

“…First, local authorities enforcing policies in a resource-poor context may explore the potential for more efficient or even solicited inspections, by building on the finding that meat inspections add commercial value-particularly meat sold in butcheries. Further research should assist local authorities to cooperate with butcheries and identify ways to organise this better [21]. Similarly, further research could explore the risk embodied in invisible pathogens, and to what extent visible signs of regular inspections, such as stamps, may have commercial value for meals cooked in eateries.…”

“…The items covered a range of questions that were in a carefully calibrated way aligned with other HAZEL research being undertaken with actors in other sections of the meat value chain such as operators of slaughter slabs and frontline government officials [21,47]. Definitions of "major events," "food safety," etc.…”

“…There is a degree of irony in the finding that a majority of operators of butcheries mention external agency more often as an explanation for food safety than their own agency because the inspectors' role is to ensure that butchers comply with regulations and act as responsible agents in the provision of safe meat-in other words, that butchers themselves demonstrate agency for meat safety. (We also researched the actual enforcement of regulations regarding health and hygiene standards in Moshi Urban and Moshi Rural [21].) Such perceptions of limited agency contrast with operators of eateries who strongly emphasised their own agency in relation to meat safety.…”

“…Tanzania's butchers are required to meet infrastructural and hygiene requirements, and are inspected to ensure they comply with food safety standards [20], although in practice this involves a complicated combination of pre-arranged as well as impromptu inspection, negotiation, diplomacy, self-regulation, and occasional clamp-down [21]. Operators of eateries cook raw meat purchased from butchers and prepare meat soup (supu) and/or roasted meat or nyama choma for their customers.…”