John Steenhuisen, the new minister of agriculture and leader of the DA, will prioritise the implementation of a new track-and-trace system to monitor the movement of animals around the country.
This measure is designed to combat animal health crises that have led to substantial financial losses by farmers in recent years.
Outbreaks of foot-and-mouth disease have resulted in export bans on SA fresh meat and wool, while a widespread avian flu outbreak in 2023 forced producers to cull billions of birds, leading to financial losses running into hundreds of millions of rand.
“Biosecurity remains a clear challenge, especially in the poultry and livestock subsector, and remains a top priority for the department. Recent outbreaks of avian flu and foot-and-mouth disease pose a significant risk to not only our local production, but also to our export potential to other countries. It is an area where greater focus is going to have to be given,” Steenhuisen said during his department’s budget vote debate in parliament, on Tuesday.
He said greater effort was required to focus on prevention and containment strategies and protocols that were rapidly implementable and deployable on the ground level.
“In this light, the department will be focusing on a new track-and-trace system for the movement of animals around the country. This is becoming necessary because international export markets and trade organisations are rapidly moving to systems where trade will only be possible with livestock products if such a product can be traced to its origin,” Steenhuisen said.
A track-and-trace system, he said, could also be used in the combating of stock theft, which is rife in rural areas, as each animal would be uniquely traceable to the original owner and the movements of each animal would be recorded.
Steenhuisen said he would also focus on the swift implementation of the agricultural and agro-processing master plan, and on “modernising” the agricultural sector by conducting a review of outdated policies that have been in place, in some instances, for more than 70 years.
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