South Africa on Wednesday rolled out a 10‑year drive to vaccinate nearly 20 million cattle as a fast‑spreading foot‑and‑mouth outbreak hits herds and squeezes key export markets.
The highly contagious viral infection, also known as FMD, is not dangerous to humans but particularly affects ruminant livestock such as cattle, sheep and goats. It causes fever, blisters in the mouth and near the hoof – and sometimes death.
The outbreak began in 2021 and has since spread to all but one of South Africa’s nine provinces, Agriculture Minister John Steenhuisen said, adding it has taken a “financial and emotional toll” on farmers.
Since losing its status as an FMD-free country in 2019, “our farmers have faced unprecedented challenges,” he told reporters in Cape Town.
“I have received many pleas for help from commercial to communal farmers, who have borne the heavy burden of the recent FMD outbreaks.”
The plan, split into four phases, will see the government source vaccines from Argentina and Turkey, alongside supplies from next-door neighbour Botswana. Local production is also being ramped up, with a new line expected to start at 20,000 doses a week before scaling to a capacity of 960,000 doses.
“The objective is to reduce outbreak incidence within 12 months by more than 70 percent in the high-risk provinces,” said Steenhuisen.
Nearly two million cattle had already been vaccinated, he added. Plans were also under way to declare the outbreak a national disaster, giving the government extra powers to intervene.
It was not immediately clear how many cattle had died in the current outbreak, as many farmers opt to cull their herds and cases often go unreported.
But the Southern Africa Agricultural Initiative, a farmers’ lobby group, said the new plan still falls short, arguing it fails to offer the solutions needed by producers who are “currently facing a survival crisis”.
In 2024, South Africa exported some 38,600 tonnes of beef, according to the National Agricultural Marketing Council, mostly to the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Egypt.
China, one of its key markets, suspended beef imports from South Africa over concerns of FMD.
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