A court ruling empowers livestock owners to procure and administer FMD vaccines, limiting state control of the management of the disease.
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The recent Gauteng High Court order on the procurement of Foot-and-Mouth Disease (FMD) vaccines paves the way for farmers not to rely on the state for treating the disease. The court order was handed down this week as the Department of Agriculture produced recommendations for the public and the private sector to work together in combating the disease.
The judgment by Judge Johann van der Westhuizen addressed the litigation brought by Sakeliga, the Southern African Agri Initiative (SAAI), and Free State Agriculture. The African Farmers’ Association of South Africa (AFASA) said the recent court judgments on FMD in South Africa have mainly dealt with whether private farmers and agricultural groups may legally procure and administer FMD vaccines without full state control.
“The court has increasingly criticised delays by the Department of Agriculture and, in the latest interim ruling, allowed lawful private procurement and administration of vaccines while preventing government interference in those private arrangements,” it said.
The SAAI said in a statement that the current outbreak has been a major threat since 2022/23. “The order also creates an opportunity for farmers and other stakeholders, who have been excluded by the Minister, to provide input into the final vaccination scheme. The Minister, for more than a month, failed to indicate the legal basis for his insistence that all aspects of the vaccination campaign must be controlled by the state. It is now clear that such legal grounds do not exist but are instead based on an ideological preference for centralised state control rather than private initiative,” SAAI noted.
ActionSA parliamentary leader Athol Trollip welcomed the interim order, which found that livestock owners were unlawfully excluded from procuring and administering legally manufactured FMD vaccines to their own livestock. “It vindicates the litigation brought by Sakeliga, the Southern African Agri Initiative, and Free State Agriculture, and confirms what farming communities have argued throughout this crisis: government alone cannot win the fight against FMD while excluding livestock owners from directly assisting in vaccination efforts.”
He said at Tuesday’s meeting of Parliament’s Portfolio Committee on Agriculture, where weekly FMD reports are tabled, it became increasingly clear that the government’s current vaccination rollout is struggling to keep pace with the scale of the outbreak. He added that the reports presented to the committee indicate that while 9.5 million vaccine doses have already been imported, only 3.8 million have been administered to date.
Agriculture Minister John Steenhuisen said his primary focus remains the implementation of the national FMD Strategy. “Our objective remains to vaccinate at least 80% of the national cattle population with two doses of vaccine as swiftly as possible as part of South Africa’s pathway toward achieving WOAH-recognised FMD-free status with vaccination. This would unlock significant export opportunities for South Africa's red meat sector,” he said.
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