The foot and mouth disease outbreak in KwaZulu-Natal is wreaking havoc on the dairy sector, which is responsible for 30% of South Africa’s milk production. The dairy sector in KwaZulu-Natal is calling for urgent intervention and says the foot and mouth disease outbreak has become critical. The province is home to roughly 220,000 dairy animals.
The Milk Producers’ Organisation released a statement on Monday, 8 December, describing the situation as an escalating foot and mouth disease (FMD) outbreak that threatened national food security, rural livelihoods and the stability of the dairy value chain. The organisation said that “despite the efforts of veterinarians, producers and provincial services to prioritise the most urgent cases, severe vaccine shortages prevent proactive containment of the outbreak. Current supplies only allow reactive, crisis-by-crisis management, which is not sustainable.” On 4 December 2025, Daily Maverick visited farmers and veterinarians working around Ixopo, Creighton, Howick and uMzimkhulu.
Dave Moberly, a dairy farmer from Creighton near uMzimkhulu, is still reeling from the impact of FMD on his farm. Of 1,200 cows, 800 were infected, 500 severely. He told Daily Maverick he was particularly upset because state procedures around access to the vaccine had failed him.
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Moberly heard there was an outbreak nearby and began looking for options on how he could secure vaccines. He learnt that the state did not have any vaccine, leading him to ask around to secure some for his herd. This had cost him more than R180,000.
He secured a supply of Botswana vaccine from a feedlotter, but that required state channels, including a sign-off in Pretoria and authorisation through the Allerton Provincial Veterinary Laboratory in Pietermaritzburg. This led to a critical 10-day delay and an extra four-day wait after the department “forgot to get the vaccine”. Moberly said the outbreak on his farm should have been entirely preventable.
“Had we injected two weeks before when we were asking, we wouldn’t have been infected,” he said. Moberly saw symptoms of FMD while he was in the process of securing vaccines. They noticed one of the animals frothing due to mouth lesions, and other symptoms such as a high fever, a sudden drop in milk production, excessive salivation and lameness.
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