Farmers call for stronger biosecurity as South Africa battles foot-and-mouth disease outbreaks

Daily Maverick

2 days ago

As the Department of Agriculture rolls out its vaccination plan, an industry expert offers long-term solutions to foot-and-mouth outbreaks.
Earlier this week, the Department of Agriculture announced that R72-million had been set aside specifically for the purchasing of foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) vaccines. A total of 500,000 of the 900,000 vaccines arrived and were delivered under police guard. The second batch is en route.
Minister of Agriculture John Steenhuisen said that the vaccination of cattle was part of the department's strategy to get FMD under control. The department would also hold discussions with industry to develop a long-term plan to render the country FMD free. This includes new directives aimed at controlling the movement of cloven-hoofed livestock across the country.
'During the past two weeks, in addition to the continued outbreaks in KwaZulu-Natal, the disease was detected in pockets in Gauteng, North West and Mpumalanga. In Gauteng, there are clusters of outbreaks in the East Rand, West Rand and around Heidelberg. The outbreaks around Heidelberg are also affecting farms in Mpumalanga. In North West, outbreaks have been reported around Ventersdorp, Potchefstroom and Rustenburg. FMD-positive properties have been placed under quarantine and the vaccination of affected animals has commenced,' the department said in a statement.
Andrew Ardington is a farmer and the founder of The Regenerative Agricultural Association of South Africa (RegenAg SA). He believes the state should be working on implementing the laws that are currently in place to assist with biosecurity. He said the new regulations were only window dressing.
'Step one, stop the animals moving. How do you do step one effectively? Law enforcement, and give the people an alternative market as step two,' he said.
He added that the government could work on creating markets in quarantined areas, which would deter people from smuggling animals to non-affected areas to be sold.
'There is a collapse of the veterinary services, and as a result no one is prosecuted ever for foot-and-mouth disease, and it's not going to change. If I go to jail because I sold animals from my farm that had foot-and-mouth disease, my neighbors are not going to sell animals with foot-and-mouth.'
The government is supposed to think, 'These are my people. I'm trying to help them do their job. Their job is to sell their livestock — oh, I've put them in a quarantine area, they can't sell their livestock. I must come up with a solution so they can sell their livestock. Let's authorise an abattoir there and we'll subsidise it to the tune of a million rand a year. It's going to make a loss because there aren't enough cows there for it to make a profit, but that's fine — for a million bucks a year we stop animals being smuggled out of the foot-and-mouth area,' said Ardington.
He added that this was affordable in comparison with the millions of rand the industry and government lost every year due to FMD. He suggested that these abattoirs could be a place to meet the vet, and could be a support system for farmers locked out of trade due to quarantine.
Poor implementation of law enforcement
He said the poor implementation of law enforcement had resulted in farmers possibly having to enforce biosecurity; red meat associations had previously reported pulling together to check and vet animals being transported in and out of their areas.
'It's that chain of command that has to happen. Has it come to the stage where the private sector has to now be in charge, not just of the security of their livestock and of their farms and of their feedlots, but actually of the biosecurity? Must they go in and sue the person who sold the animals because the veterinary council, the Department of Agriculture and the police are not doing their job?'
Ardington acknowledged that this could be a slippery slope and should not be the case.
'It's going to end up being black versus white, of poor black people with goats and sheep smuggling to an area where they can get a decent price for their animals, being arrested by white farmers. Why is this happening? Not because they are nasty people, any of them, it is because their government is not doing its job, so it definitely shouldn't be up to the farmers,' said Ardington.
Minister in the Presidency Khumbudzo Ntshavheni briefed members of the media on the outcomes of the Cabinet meeting on Wednesday, and said: 'The Cabinet welcomes the arrival of the much-needed vaccines sourced from Botswana to combat foot-and-mouth disease as there has been an outbreak in certain parts of the country, especially to the affected areas of KwaZulu-Natal and the Eastern Cape. The vaccines are being distributed and administered free of charge,' said Ntshavheni.
Willie Aucamp, the DA's national spokesperson, said in a statement on Monday, 23 June 2025: 'Vaccines will only get us so far, and therefore physical barriers against the spread of foot-and-mouth disease must also be enforced. We note that on 13 June 2025 the department published critical regulations to ensure that animal-to-animal transmissions may be prevented, not just at the country's borders but also at the farm level, on transport corridors, and at animal auction sites.'
Regulations
The minister recently gazetted new interim regulations for the movement and sale of animals .
Steenhuisen said: 'Those who break the law must feel the consequences, because there are grave economic consequences if the law is broken in this regard.'
Section 11 of the Animal Diseases Act, 1984 (Act No 35 of 1984) imposes a legal duty on any owner or manager of animals to take all reasonable steps to prevent their animals from becoming infected with any disease, and to prevent the spread of any disease from their animals or land to other animals or other properties.
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