EDITORIAL | Billions lost due to state’s delayed response to FMD

President Cyril Ramaphosa’s announcement last week that the foot and mouth disease outbreak had been declared a national disaster and that the government would speedily roll out 28 million FMD vaccines, will provide some relief to farmers. What is impossible to understand is why everything needs to become an absolute crisis before government responds appropriately. SA lost its FMD-free status in 2019.

To reclaim that from the World Organisation for Animal Health required “strictly controlled vaccination rollout, official surveillance, strict movement controls, and systematic vaccination coverage that can be documented and verified”. Not surprisingly, FMD cases jumped from a 20-year high of 7,700 in 2022 to 24,200 in 2025, according to the Bureau for Food and Agricultural Policy (BFAP). That becomes a problem when the state is dysfunctional.

The Agricultural Research Council (ARC) and Onderstepoort Biological Products (OBP) — the two statutory bodies mandated to act in the public interest particularly when it comes to research and vaccine protocols — have not been able to produce an FMD vaccine for 20 years because of collapsed and ageing technology and infrastructure and general mismanagement. And so, by last year, FMD was out of control to the point that it became the epidemic it is today. It has taken until recently for government to institute the three vital elements to any breakout of disease — prevention, early detection, and rapid response.

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At long last, following years of dysfunction, the ARC and OBP have successfully produced their first 12,900 batches of FMD vaccine. The agriculture department has moved to secure vaccine imports to supplement local production.

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