South Africa seeks to achieve FMD-free status by working with a country that has successfully eliminated the disease, Agriculture Minister John Steenhuisen has said<\/p>\n
South Africa has signed an agreement with Brazil to help eradicate foot-and-mouth disease by 2028, focusing on vaccine supply, disease surveillance, diagnostics and biosecurity.
\nThe move comes as the South African government faces mounting pressure and legal action over what critics have called a \u201clethargic\u201d response to the animal health emergency. Meeting with his Brazilian counterpart, Agriculture Minister Andre Carlos Alves de Paula, on Thursday,\u00a0John\u00a0Steenhuisen tapped into Brazil\u2019s hard-won expertise.
\nBrazil achieved FMD-free status without vaccination from the World Organisation for Animal Health (WOAH) on May 29, 2025, a historic milestone that took 64 years of rigorous policy implementation.
\n\u201dBy aligning with a nation that has successfully eliminated the disease, South Africa aims to achieve FMD-free status with vaccination, transforming biosecurity from a trade barrier into a bridge for economic growth,\u201d Steenhuisen stated.
\nThe newly adopted Action Plan for 2026-2028 mandates immediate, full implementation. South Africa will dispatch animal health experts to Brazil the week of May 19, 2026,\u00a0for an intensive knowledge exchange. Following this, South Africa will host a seminar involving a high-level Brazilian delegation, including researchers and livestock farmers, to share strategies, policies, and technologies used in their decades-long fight.<\/p>\n
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Brazil\u2019s support will cover vital technical areas, including assistance with vaccination protocols, post-vaccination monitoring, and generating field-based evidence. Minister De Paula, while pledging support, offered a sharp piece of advice to his South African counterpart: \u201cGovernment must not abdicate its responsibility to be at the centre of the fight against FMD, as it is a notifiable disease and needs a regional approach.\u201d
\nThe collaboration with Brazil deepens South Africa\u2019s commitment to a South-South partnership, following a recent high-level working visit to Argentina. That visit concluded with a separate 2026\u20132028 FMD Work Plan and pivotal agreements focused on securing a stable vaccine supply.
\nTo date, South Africa has successfully secured and distributed 2.5 million doses of\u00a0FMD vaccines\u00a0from the Argentine firm Biog\u00e9nesis Bag\u00f3. This includes one million doses of bivalent SAT-1 and SAT-2 vaccines, and 1.5 million doses of trivalent SAT-1, SAT-2, and SAT-3 vaccines. Furthermore, the delegation inspected production facilities in Argentina, where a critical five million additional doses are ready for export, pending local regulatory approval.<\/p>\n
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\u201dOur immediate priority is to secure a stable and sufficient vaccine pipeline so that we can scale up vaccinations rapidly across the country,\u201d Steenhuisen said following his Argentina visit, underscoring the urgency.
\nDespite these diplomatic wins, the government\u2019s pace has been severely criticised at home. Just days before the Brazil alliance was announced, the Gauteng High Court, Pretoria, reluctantly granted the government a postponement in a legal bid by farmers\u2019 organisations to allow the private sector to procure and administer FMD vaccines.
\nThe court, however, showed its displeasure by granting punitive costs against the government and ordering\u00a0Steenhuisen to publish a compulsory vaccination scheme by May 5. Judge Corrie van der Westhuizen openly criticized the government\u2019s handling of the crisis, noting that officials appeared to be\u00a0\u201cno longer considering it to be of such importance\u201d\u00a0despite the FMD outbreak having been declared a national emergency.<\/p>\n
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This judicial admonishment echoes the warnings from the agricultural industry. FMD Response SA, a coalition of dairy, pork, and beef producers, has warned that the government\u2019s current \u201cslow-motion\u201d approach is heading toward a national disaster.
\n\u201dSouth Africa\u2019s 14 million cattle must be vaccinated within a six-to-eight-week window to create herd immunity in 80% of them and stop transmission,\u201d argued FMD Response SA spokesperson Andrew Morphew, citing the intensive, short-term mass campaigns successfully used by Brazil and Argentina.
\nFirst published by IOL<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
South Africa seeks to achieve FMD-free status by working with a country that has successfully eliminated the disease, Agriculture Minister John Steenhuisen has said South Africa has signed an agreement…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":34725,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"initial","rop_publish_now_accounts":[],"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","footnotes":""},"categories":[4,6,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-34724","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-economy","category-environment","category-politics"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t