About the Authors

Daniel Nenene Qekwana

Contributed equally to this work with: Daniel Nenene Qekwana, James Wabwire Oguttu, Dries Venter

Affiliation Section Veterinary Public Health, Department of Paraclinical Sciences, Faculty of Veterinary Sciences, University of Pretoria, Pretoria, South Africa

James Wabwire Oguttu

Contributed equally to this work with: Daniel Nenene Qekwana, James Wabwire Oguttu, Dries Venter

Affiliation Department of Agriculture and Animal Health, College of Agriculture and Environmental Sciences, University of South Africa, Johannesburg, South Africa

Dries Venter

Contributed equally to this work with: Daniel Nenene Qekwana, James Wabwire Oguttu, Dries Venter

Affiliation Gauteng Department of Agriculture and Rural Development, Veterinary Services Directory, Pretoria, South Africa

Agricola Odoi

aodoi@utk.edu

‡ This author was a mentoring author.

Affiliations Section Veterinary Public Health, Department of Paraclinical Sciences, Faculty of Veterinary Sciences, University of Pretoria, Pretoria, South Africa, Biomedical and Diagnostic Sciences, College of Veterinary Medicine, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, Tennessee, United States of America

Competing Interests

Dries Venter is affiliated/employed by Gauteng Department of Agriculture and Rural Development (GDARD) which is the custodian of the meat inspection surveillance data submitted by the various abattoirs. However, he does not work for any of the meat inspection services nor offer meat inspection services at any of the abattoirs studied. Additionally, although the GDARD is the custodian of the surveillance data, it is not in any way associated with the provision of meat inspection services. Moreover, the department did not contribute to the decision of submission of the article for publication.

Author Contributions

Conceived and designed the experiments: DNQ JWO AO. Performed the experiments: DNQ AO DV. Analyzed the data: DNQ AO. Contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools: DNQ AO DV. Wrote the paper: DNQ JWO DV AO.