South Africa's livestock industry warns of a looming disaster due to the slow vaccination rollout against Foot-and-Mouth Disease.
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South Africa’s livestock industry is sounding the alarm, warning that the government’s current "slow-motion" approach to Foot-and-Mouth Disease (FMD) is a recipe for failure that threatens food security and thousands of agricultural jobs.
Industry experts and farmers are now calling for a "wartime" mobilization to vaccinate 14 million cattle within a strict six-to-eight-week window, a feat they say is the only proven way to achieve herd immunity and crush the virus.
They noted that during a briefing to Parliament’s Portfolio Committee on Agriculture on Tuesday, Department of Agriculture Deputy Director-General Dipepeneneng Serage admitted his dissatisfaction with the pace of the rollout.
Despite the urgency, the committee learned that the government has procured 4 million doses and plans to procure another 7 million, but there is a distinct lack of detail on how these vaccines are actually getting from government fridges into the cattle on the ground.
FMD Response SA, a coalition representing over 250 dairy, pork, and beef producers, argues that the government’s plan to stretch vaccination over a year may allow the virus to continue circulating and mutating. “South Africa’s 14 million cattle must be vaccinated within a six-to-eight-week window to create herd immunity in 80% of them and stop transmission,” said FMD Response SA spokesperson Andrew Morphew.
Morphew pointed to international success stories, noting that South American giants like Brazil and Argentina successfully eradicated the disease using exactly this type of intensive, short-term mass campaign.
The bottleneck, according to industry players, lies in state ineffectiveness regarding procurement and distribution. To bypass these hurdles, the coalition is demanding that the private sector be allowed to step in. The proposal includes:
In a potential breakthrough, DDG Serage indicated during a recent radio interview that the department is willing to work with large-scale commercial farmers. He committed to facilitating the necessary permits for the private sector to import vaccines, a move Morphew described as "warmly welcomed."
“Only through a united and focused effort can we solve this crisis,” Morphew concluded. "Without immediate action at speed and scale, the consequences for our economy will only deepen."
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