Minister of Agriculture Willie Aucamp will face one of his defining challenges as he takes office: whether the country can muster the political will, logistical coordination, and scientific understanding to defeat FMD before it spreads further. However, he has strong allies, as private sector farmers and veterinarians are standing at the ready to assist him, the Department of Agriculture and the rest of the industry to eradicate FMD
A single FMD outbreak on a dairy farm will cost roughly R5 million in lost milk production alone. Multiply that across multiple facilities, and the broader economy faces billions in lost revenue. Already, farmers have weathered not only the financial costs but the emotional toll of culling animals that vaccination could have saved.
Beef exports are down, leading to lower incomes for farmers and reduced tax revenue for the fiscus, while job losses threaten communities across the agricultural sector. Yet this fight can be won if the Department of Agriculture’s approach takes the biology of the disease into account when planning their response.
The biology is unambiguous: FMD spreads exponentially through unvaccinated populations of cattle. Even vaccinated cattle can become infected when surrounded by high viral loads, because the vaccine, however effective, cannot overcome the sheer volume of virus in a disease reservoir. To break the chain of transmission, there needs to be a wall of immunity created by vaccination coverage so comprehensive that the virus has nowhere to go.
This means nearly all the country’s cattle must be vaccinated at speed and scale, a reality that a veterinarian advising the Department of Agriculture has emphasised in documents that have since become public. The World Organisation for Animal Health (WOAH) advises that to beat the disease, one needs simultaneous immunity which means 80% of cattle immune at the same time. This is why the government’s current goal of vaccinating 80% of cattle by December – still many months away — is simply insufficient. The target must be almost 100% of cattle in the shortest possible timeframe, in order to reach the necessary threshold of 80% having simultaneous immunity.
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Moreover, vaccination campaigns currently taking place must account for waning immunity: cattle vaccinated months ago, at the start of the campaign in late February, are losing protection and require boosters. This is an epidemiological necessity.
South Africa can also learn from countries that have beaten FMD. Brazil ensured every farm received vaccines, even airlifting supplies and sending them down the Amazon River to reach remote outposts. Argentina managed to vaccinate 60 million cattle in short windows during its outbreak, then administered boosters six months later. Both countries became FMD-free through universal vaccination at scale and speed.
Currently, vaccines in South Africa spend two weeks or more in centralised storage at the Onderstepoort Biological Products facility. This may satisfy administrative procedures, but it fails the test of epidemiological necessity. When FMD spreads in days, a two-week delay at a central facility is a guarantee of failure, especially as farmers grow increasingly desperate.
The practical solution is straightforward: vaccines must move directly from the two licensed importers to veterinarians in the field, who then dispense them to farmers. This is how modern supply chains function across industries, including in animal health.
To beat FMD, South Africa should take the following steps:
Firstly, acknowledge that vaccination at scale and speed is non-negotiable. The central measure of success must be “vaccines administered to cattle,” not “vaccines purchased,”. The current plan to vaccinate 80 percent of cattle by December must be abandoned in favour of almost 100 percent coverage in the shortest possible timeframe.
Secondly, the Department of Agriculture needs to decentralise vaccine distribution immediately, eliminating the bottleneck of a single state or private distributor. The director of animal health, as authorised in import permits, should empower private veterinarians to dispense vaccines, giving farmers easy access to multiple providers.
Thirdly, remove unnecessary regulatory delays. Vaccines sitting at Onderstepoort Biological Products for two weeks while farmers wait represents a regulatory regime out of step with the crisis.
Fourthly, the government must ensure that vaccination is compulsory and that regional vaccination levels reach the threshold needed for collective immunity. The cattle in defined areas must be vaccinated simultaneously, and at sufficiently high levels, to break transmission.
Fifthly, the government needs to maintain proper records of which cattle have been vaccinated and where. For the World Organisation for Animal Health to certify South Africa as FMD-free, it requires accurate records of vaccinated cattle.
Sixthly, the state is vaccinating communal cattle and those belonging to small-scale farmers and must ensure that no animals are missed – something FMD Response SA is aware of happening.
With a response planned around the biology of FMD while working with the private sector, South Africa will beat the disease. The farmers of this nation are waiting and watching and stand ready to help.
Andrew Morphew is a commercial dairy farmer and spokesperson for FMD Response SA.
