In the face of one of the country’s most serious outbreaks of foot and mouth disease (FMD) in years, farmers are fighting for the right to buy vaccines and administer these to their cattle.
Although FMD is a state-controlled disease, the fight by farmers to vaccinate their own herds, which will soon come to court, is important as a test case. It would represent a major gain for beef and dairy farmers in the face of a serious threat to their livelihoods. Greater resources would be brought to the fight against FMD, which with ongoing state failure could prove vital to preventing massive economic damage.
FMD infection is rapidly growing. Cases of FMD in the SA beef and dairy industry grew about eight times to around 24,500 last year, after a more gradual rise over the previous year, according to the World Animal Health Information System. There is no available figure for the national herd’s infection rate. At last count in mid-January by BFAP, an agricultural industry data firm, there have been outbreaks on 90 farms across eight of the nine provinces.
The economic impact of FMD goes well beyond the infected herds. Farmers within a ten km radius fall in a Department of Agriculture imposed “red zone” and cattle cannot be moved out of this area. In these zones, cows cannot be sold for slaughter and dairy farmers must often dump large amounts of milk. All this is likely to mean higher milk and red meat prices, and a drop in exports. The rapid spread in outbreaks could reduce the exports of the beef and dairy industry by about two-thirds this year, says BFAP.
Farmers have lost faith in the ability of the government to control the latest outbreaks and vaccinate the national herd. They say the government does not have the vaccines and the state veterinary service has slow response times to FMD outbreaks, is underfunded and lacks sufficient professional capacity
Government’s vaccine procurement process is of particular concern. The farmers are frustrated by by the time it will take for sufficient supplies ordered by the government from Botswana, Brazil and Turkey to be delivered. Local state-owned producers of animal vaccines, Onderstepoort Biological Products and the Agricultural Research Council, produce little of what they did in the past due to mismanagement. The Treasury made a nearly R500 million allocation to Onderstepoort to expand vaccine production, and answers are still awaited as to what happened to the money.
To establish the right to vaccinate, farmer organisations say they will take John Steenhusien, the Minister of Agriculture, to court. They want to obtain a judicial opinion on whether there is any legal impediment to livestock owners administering FMD vaccines.
Small business association, Sakeliga, the Southern African Agricultural Initiative (Saai) and Free State Agriculture say their court action aims at changing the regulations issued under the Animal Diseases Act of 1984. These groups insist the present regulations were made for a time when the country faced far more limited FMD outbreaks.
Steenhuisen is facing growing anger from farmers who find it strange that the leader the DA, a party that favours market-based solutions, should be only allowing limited involvement of farmers and private vets, while still controlling the vaccine supply chain.
Dr Danie Odendaal, director of the Veterinary Network says private vets and farmers are usually the first to detect outbreaks, have the field expertise, the capacity to get to the cattle, and to report the spread of the disease in the areas in which they operate. Many beef and dairy farmers already vaccinate against a variety of diseases and could easily do so for foot-and-mouth disease. The private veterinary sector has a coordinated disease and reporting system, which would make it a simple process to inform the government of developments.
Even if farmers and private vets are allowed to buy and vaccinate herds, the state could still maintain overall control of the campaign against FMD. Approval from the agriculture department is required for imports of animal health vaccines, even after these have been approved for use. To ensure the controlled use of vaccines and proper record keeping, farmers could take the nose prints of cows vaccinated and then attach the UPC code of the dose to the image.
Steenhuisen is standing firm on this and says his department has begun a major procurement programme to buy sufficient vaccines to eradicate the disease in ten years. He talks of not wanting, “a vaccine free for all,” indicating that the government wants to retain control over the vaccine supply chain.
Governments around the world wanted to keep control of Covid vaccine supply chains. Their rationale was that they needed control over the approval process and quality, and wanted to bulk buy to ensure lower prices and equitable access. But these goals can still be met if farmers are allowed to buy and use their own vaccines.
Steenhuisen says private vets will be allowed to buy and use FMD vaccines, but it is not known the extent to which this will be allowed. Despite consultation bodies representing farmers say their suggestions have not been implemented.
Brazil, which last year was declared as a foot and mouth disease free country by the World Organisation for Animal Health, has run a world class vaccination campaign since 2017. Brazil’s disease-free status has allowed it to become one of the world’s largest exporters of beef, much to the irritation of farmers in the European Union.
In Brazil it is the animal owners who are responsible for purchasing and applying FMD vaccines. The government’s Official Veterinary Service, the equivalent of our State Veterinary Services oversees the vaccination campaigns, and aspects of the supply chain including assessing quality, but the rest is left to owners. That is pretty much what our private vets and farmers would like to see happen here.
On its own, this is a fight by farmers to protect their livelihoods in the face of state failure to promptly deal with a crisis. But this is part of a wider pattern of the private sector having to fight to be allowed to play a larger role when there is state failure. So far there has been some success in the case of energy supply, but limited progress in rail and ports.
“Load shedding” became so severe that ultimately the ANC allowed independent power producers to generate uncapped amounts. This helped break the Eskom monopoly and end regular power cuts.
Mismanagement at our ports and on the railways have throttled our exports. To ease the bottlenecks, the ANC has been slowly concessioning ports and harbours to private operators.
Steenhuisen has said he would push to have a state of “national disaster” declared over the rise in FMD outbreaks to bring more resources to bear. Even with this, relying on an already stretched and mismanaged state will not do the job on FMD.
Far greater resources can be brought to bear if, at least, the Brazilian approach were adopted.
[Image: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Cattle-image.jpg]
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