The Minister of Agriculture, John Steenhuisen, says plans are underway for South Africa to produce its own foot-and-mouth disease vaccine. Steenhuisen was addressing farmers in Eshowe in northern KwaZulu-Natal, which is the epicentre of the disease.

He says currently the country is importing vaccines from Botswana. Steenhuisen outlined the government’s strategy, which includes a multidisciplinary approach combining existing controls with new frameworks, including scaling up vaccine production, accelerating livestock identification, and investing in research.

Livestock farmers are growing increasingly concerned about the ongoing foot and mouth disease (FMD) outbreak, which is severely impacting livestock sales, trade, and farm operations.

According to Steenhuisen, government is actively working on plans to mitigate the threat posed by the disease to South Africa’s livestock industry and the economy, particularly the red meat export market. There are currently 274 unresolved outbreaks across five provinces, with a significant concentration of 180 cases in KwaZulu-Natal.

New cases have been reported outside the initial Disease Management Area.

Steenhuisen stressed that controlling the disease requires a collective effort, with farmers, communities, and the government working together. He urged farmers to co-operate with veterinary officials and to report suspected cases immediately and adhere to movement restrictions and biosecurity protocols.

Government is also embarking on producing its own vaccine.

“I think it’s of national security importance that we have our own vaccine. We lost our ability to produce our own vaccines around 2013 with the setbacks of OBP. The agriculture research council is in the final stages of developing our own vaccine in South Africa. It’ll cover the SAT 1, 2 and 3 strains that are here. There are a lot of people saying, ‘Why don’t we just import vaccines from Turkey or Brazil? They are different strains. We have to have vaccines that deal with our strains here in South Africa.

Once the ARC has got the vaccines finalised, we can then start moving into production,” says Steenhuisen.

He says, in addition, abattoirs will be built in districts considered FMD hotspots.

“We want to desensitise from moving animals out of outbreak areas into non-outbreak areas. And what often happens, particularly with smallholder farmers, is that those who rely on their animals for their livelihood. They tend to panic when there is an outbreak, and they move animals out because they are worried that they won’t be able to slaughter the animals. So it’s going to be very important that we develop either a public-private partnership or the government is going to have to come to the party and develop abattoirs that are specifically set aside with accreditation to slaughter FMD animals. This will ensure that people will be able to realise value for the animals within the disease management area and not be incentivised to take the animals out of the areas to get slaughtered, and the likelihood is it will exacerbate the spread.”

The minister has committed to providing vaccines to the province as part of a national effort to curb the spread of FMD. A mid-scale vaccine production facility is also in the works and is expected to be operational by March 2026.