The Association of Meat Importers and Exporters (AMIE) has called for urgent short-term measures to address SA’s worsening foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) crisis, including accelerated vaccine procurement and closer co-ordination between the government and industry.
While welcoming agricultural minister John Steenhuisen’s update as a step towards stabilising animal health and restoring export confidence, AMIE cautioned that without urgent steps to boost vaccine availability and rollout, efforts to restore market access and rebuild the red-meat export sector could face further delays.
Steenhuisen said on Monday that while progress had been made in resolving outbreaks in the Eastern Cape and Limpopo, the country still faces 274 unresolved FMD outbreaks across KwaZulu-Natal, Gauteng, the Free State, North West and Mpumalanga. The virus spread from KwaZulu-Natal into Mpumalanga through an auction in February.
Positive cases have been recorded across all major cattle farming systems, including commercial beef herds, dairy, breeding, feedlots, and communal holdings, and countries such as China, Namibia and Zimbabwe have since suspended the import of cloven-hoofed animals and related products.
Two weeks ago, Stats SA’s consumer price index data showed that food inflation had risen to its highest level in 18 months, helping to push headline inflation above the Bank’s preferred 3% target. Food and nonalcoholic beverages exerted the strongest upward pressure on the headline figure, with meat prices surging 10.5% — driven by concerns over FMD outbreaks and panic buying.
Foot-and-mouth crisis: What you need to know
- Highly contagious: Affects cloven-hoofed animals such as cattle, pigs, sheep and goats.
- Current spread: Progress has been made in resolving the outbreaks in the Eastern Cape and Limpopo. The current hot spots are KwaZulu-Natal, Gauteng, the Free State, North West, and Mpumalanga.
- Control measures: Government has imposed livestock movement bans, quarantines, and vaccination drives.
- Ripple effect: Farmers face herd losses, rising feed costs amd reduced market access, SA could suffer beef export bans and the outbreak could trickle down to consumers through higher meat prices.
The agricultural department plans to commission a domestic vaccine production facility with a capacity of 150,000 to 200,000 doses per year by March next year.
According to Steenhuisen, the government had procured 900,000 vaccine doses from the Botswana Vaccine Institute at a cost of R72m. Of those, 500,000 doses arrived in June and were deployed across six provinces. A further 400,000 doses landed last week, with distribution under way to hotspot provinces.
AMIE welcomed the steps taken to manage the FMD crisis, but called the unresolved outbreaks “concerning”.
In its statement, AMIE emphasised that while long-term vaccine production plans were welcome, immediate steps, including sourcing additional vaccines from reputable international suppliers, were essential to addressing the current shortfall.
“In this regard, AMIE encourages the [Industry-Government Task Team on Animal Disease Prevention, Management and Control] to co-ordinate resource mobilisation from industry towards procurement of additional vaccines to speed up the vaccination programme, in support of government interventions,” the organisation said in a statement on Tuesday.
“SA’s red-meat brand is worth protecting,” AMIE CEO Imameleng Mothebe said. “If we execute sufficient vaccines at pace, work closely together and harness public-private capacity through the new task team, we can restore market access faster and grow the country’s much needed export sector.”
AMIE noted the importance of close collaboration between the department of agriculture, land reform and rural development and the department of trade, industry and competition, particularly to expedite the resumption of trade and ensure alignment between veterinary controls and trade policy.
“The recent joint engagement between the [agriculture and trade] ministers … sets an important precedent in this regard. A collaborative approach is essential to ensure agility, faster execution and consistent alignment between veterinary measures and trade policy.”
Steenhuisen warned that the continued illegal movement of symptomatic cattle and failure to report cases were hampering containment efforts.
“Compliance with legislation and biosecurity protocols is not optional,” he said, adding that such actions “risk entrenching FMD as endemic in SA.”
“Red meat exports are quite a big part of our agricultural export market, and we've had, in the last few years, a lot of measures trying to open up new markets,” said Ayabonga Cawe, chief commissioner at the International Trade Administration Commission of SA.
“To the extent that this matter will continue, it does present a risk to those red meat exports going to many places.”
According to Cawe, SA exported nearly 40,000 tonnes of beef in the year to the end of 2024.
“I think over half of that was fresh, and about two-fifths of that was frozen. So, you can imagine the linkages even to the cold chain of using that ability to export.”
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