For some time now, the South African livestock industry has been struggling with foot-and-mouth disease (FMD), which presents enormous costs to farmers and agribusinesses. As the disease persists, the country’s export growth ambitions are also at risk.
If South Africa is to escape this costly path, we must improve our handling of disease outbreaks. Indeed, there is a need for behaviour change and for farmers to be extra vigilant in the movement of livestock.
However, we must also explore whether a broad nationwide vaccination approach would not be the most effective path to handling these diseases. We have seen some countries that have followed this path, such as Brazil, and have successfully managed to control the disease while continuing their export activity over time.
Industry buy-in
To pursue such a path, we must have broad industry buy-in, especially from the major feedlots which are key to integrating small and medium-scale livestock farmers into the formal value chain.
Without drastic changes in our approach, we risk not only the prosperity of the industry, but also limiting the participation of small and medium-scale farmers in the value chain. The higher the risk of disease outbreaks and their occurrence, the more reluctant major feedlots may be to absorb products from smaller players.
We can act immediately to implement better controls at the fences surrounding the infected zone and ensure that they are staffed 24/7, preventing any animals from crossing those fences.
We need to ask officials in the provinces of Limpopo, Mpumalanga and KwaZulu-Natal why they have not implemented this important recommendation from the Biosecurity Task Team that was made three years ago. Movement control out of the infected zone is the most important task, apart from nationwide vaccination.
Moreover, if South Africa continues to experience frequent outbreaks, we will face a reputational risk in global markets. The risk in such markets extends not only to cattle farmers and the beef industry, but also to the sheep industry and wool exporters.
Wool imports suspended
We already saw this in 2022 when China temporarily suspended imports of wool from South Africa due to concerns about the spread of FMD.
Strangely, this was when the outbreak was only in cattle. More recently, at the start of 2025, the UK also suspended wool imports from South Africa due to the current outbreak of FMD in cattle. This again illustrates the negative reputation or perception, rather than the reality, of our sheep industry, which has no active cases of FMD.
However, if we decide as a country to adopt the path of nationwide vaccination, there would be a need to increase vaccine manufacturing. As a country, embarrassingly, we currently import all of our FMD vaccine from Botswana. We have seen our manufacturing capacity at Onderstepoort Biological Products (OBP) decline significantly due to corruption and human resource challenges.
The current leadership of the Department of Agriculture is working to revive the OBP. But it will be a while before we realise the gains of these efforts.
Moreover, even when the capacity is improved, it remains unclear if we can produce sufficient volume for a regular nationwide vaccine. Thus, bringing in private labs to produce the FMD vaccine may be ideal and a no-brainer. The government could select specific labs designated for production, in addition to the OBP.
It serves no one to resist widespread vaccination to secure export markets when those exports remain at risk of frequent occurrences.
Thus, we must ask the challenging question: Is it time for South Africa to start nationwide vaccination of cattle for foot-and-mouth disease? DM