Corrigan pt. II: FMD crisis — How did we get to this point? - Biznews

Terence Corrigan
“In a nutshell, I have never felt so dependent on such incompetence,” says Johan* in frustration. His words encapsulate the sentiments of many of South Africa’s farmers confronting an unprecedented Foot and Mouth Disease outbreak.

Every farm that has experienced infection has suffered severe damage, and will probably suffer the effects for years. Some will not survive. Even those that manage to avoid the disease itself will have incurred costs from the preventative measures they are compelled to take and from the general dislocation of the farming economy.

The outbreak has to be understood in relation to how the disease has been controlled in South Africa historically. As noted last week, a combination of physical barriers and intensive monitoring was used effectively to contain wildlife in the Kruger National Park, where FMD is endemic, and prevent the spread of the disease to livestock. In addition, FMD is a “controlled animal disease” in terms of the Animal Diseases Act, and is thus recognised as a particularly severe pathogen with important socio-economic implications.

As it is a controlled disease, the state is accorded primacy in any measures against it. This has meant that not only did the state confer on itself the mandate to protect the country from FMD, but that it limited the ability of other actors to do so. This was particularly important in respect of vaccinations, a matter whose salience would rapidly become apparent.

To back this up, South Africa had developed highly regarded capacities in animal health. Onderstepoort, dating from the early 20th century, gained a deserved reputation for its research into animal health and diseases, and for producing corresponding pharmaceutical products for South Africa and elsewhere. When vaccines might be required to deal with an epizootic (the animal equivalent of an epidemic), Onderstepoort was a dependable institution and an invaluable national resource.

South Africa’s experience
Just how this could work in reality was illustrated by a number of outbreaks in 2000 and 2001. One, in a piggery in Camperdown in KwaZulu-Natal, arose from the consumption of contaminated imported feed; two others, affecting cattle in Mpumalanga and Limpopo respectively, were traced to contact with infected buffalo that had escaped the Kruger National Park.  

Samples were taken and sent to Onderstepoort for testing, which was expeditiously done, confirming the disease and the serotype. A programme of limited culling and the quarantine of affected properties was undertaken. Intensive surveillance of other farms in affected areas was instituted to identify outbreaks and take remedial action. In areas and facilities where multiple species or different groups of animals were kept (such as on some farms and in a feedlot), they were kept strictly separated from one another.

Key to the containment efforts was strict control of movement, enforced by the military, police, local authorities and farmers. The movement of animals in and out of quarantine zones was prohibited, decontamination points were set up and care taken with the transportation of people and supplies, all to minimize the possibility of the virus escaping quarantined areas.

In cases where animals were approved for slaughter, this was again subject to control – from the conditions of transport, to the abattoirs permitted to perform the slaughter, and to the disposal of high-risk body parts (the meat was approved for domestic consumption only). Vehicles and facilities involved were promptly decontaminated.

Vaccination programmes were then undertaken in affected areas to beat back the virus and prevent its recurrence, with vaccine matched to the particular strains.

By May 2002, the World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE – Office International des Epizooties) restored South Africa’s FMD-free status.

Stark contrast
This stands in stark and concerning contrast to the handling of the current outbreak. The response efforts in the 2000 Camperdown outbreak were led by Dr Gideon Brückner, a long-time state vet, who would go on to work as a senior official in the OIE. In this capacity, he advised 72 countries on FMD strategies. His expertise is unparalleled and globally recognised.

In a recent interview, he lamented South Africa’s response to the current outbreak. For Brückner, time was always of seminal importance. Urgency in the initial response, he says – by which he meant the first 48 hours – is critical to getting ahead of the disease and containing it. While the outbreak is frequently described as having arisen around March last year, warnings were being sounded as early as November 2024. It would be accurate to describe the current crisis as having been part of a series of outbreaks stretching back to 2019.

In this sense, South Africa failed years ago: “I think we already lost the fight in 2019. The disease was diagnosed just north of Polokwane at an auction, and from there it spread to many places. What they wanted to do at all costs was to safeguard our free status without addressing the risk.”

The issue, Brückner comments, is not just about animal health and welfare or even about farmers’ assets, but about South Africa’s access to foreign markets. FMD provokes enormous sensitivities. “If you have foot and mouth, nobody wants anything from you – not just beef, but there are restrictions on beef and other products.”

Brückner goes on to identify five failings which have enabled the epizootic. South Africa’s diagnostic capacity has deteriorated, meaning that farmers may need to wait for up to two weeks for tests; degraded biosecurity; weak control of movement; collapsed vaccine production; and weak enforcement of regulations.

Indeed, these concerns are neither new nor unknown to the state. A 2022 report on the state of biosecurity produced by a task team appointed by the then Minister of Agriculture, Rural Development and Land Reform, Thoko Didiza, pointed to growing systemic failures in South Africa.

“The Task Team,” the report stated on its first page, “investigated three issues: a) the change in the epidemiological evolution of animal disease challenges, b) the ability of the country to diagnose such diseases on time, and c) the preparedness of the country in putting in place realistic and scientifically justifiable remedial biosecurity measures. The main finding of the Task Team’s deliberations was that the country was failing at all three of these tasks.”

The report makes concerning reading in its specifics. Virtually every potential check on the spread of animal diseases was compromised, with the report indicating that these problems were already well known at the time it was written. For example, compromised fencing on the country’s borders and on the perimeters of infected areas had been pointed out by the OIE and by a European Union mission. “The Task Team is concerned that very little has been done to rectify these shortcomings. These fences are very important guarantees to ensure or facilitate biosecurity (i.e. to prevent the introduction of disease and manage movement controls) and need to be urgently attended to.”

Much the same complaints were expressed to the Daily Friend by farmers. For them, the issue was not only barriers between infected and non-infected areas, but also the realities of adjacent subsistence farming units, which posed a significant challenge to biosecurity. “The border fence was stolen,” said Paul*, a cattle farmer. “Cattle could roam freely in and out of areas that were at risk. There has never been proper control of the movement of cattle.”

Francois*, who runs an animal transport operation, adds that while the movement of commercially raised cattle has been significantly reduced – “It’s quiet. I’m hanging on by a thread” – this has not been the case with the informal cattle trade. “They’re not being policed, so they carry on,” he says. “I’m not blaming them. Animals are their livelihood, particularly over the January and December period.”

Interestingly and revealingly, in a briefing in mid-January 2026, Minister of Agriculture John Steenhuisen said that it was possible that military, police and municipal law enforcement agencies would be used to control the movement of cattle – though this comes close to a year after what is typically pegged as the start of the initial outbreak. South Africa had not taken the opportunity to contain the outbreak early on, and hasn’t moved to robust enforcement of such a strategy in the interim.  

Vaccines
Perhaps nothing has attracted so much attention as the question of vaccines. With FMD historically having been contained in South Africa, animals have not generally been vaccinated against it. As the outbreak gathered momentum, the need for vaccines grew rapidly and exponentially; farmers found themselves flat-footed.

Part of the issue was the “state-controlled” nature of the disease, something that the state has interpreted expansively. The state alone is permitted to procure vaccines and vaccinate animals, so farmers are dependent on state vets and the stocks of vaccine they can supply. These are often inadequate.

Derek*, for example, recalls the early outbreak: “We were recognised as high risk. Before it hit us, our farm was within 10km of a positive case. But we couldn’t vaccinate until the horse had bolted.”

A persistent complaint, then, was that vaccines simply were not available: those administered were sourced in Botswana (and in December, the Botswana Vaccine Institute was closed for a mandatory cleaning). For South Africa, the crux of the problem was in Onderstepoort, and in the shrunken capacity of its manufacturing arm, Onderstepoort Biological Products (OBP). Until a pilot batch was produced in February 2026, the facility had not produced any FMD vaccine since 2005. Production was halted due to dated equipment which needed to be modernised.

With FMD an almost nationwide crisis, in November 2025 Minister Steenhuisen declared a drive to vaccinate close to the entirety of the national herd – 100% of animals in feedlots and dairies, 90% of commercial herds and 80% of communal cattle. The size of the national herd is put at some 14 million animals.

And while the failure to contain the disease by movement control and quarantine made vaccination an inevitable course of action, it is notable that the necessity of mass vaccination had already been recognised months before – as agricultural economist Wandile Sihlobo gingerly put it in July 2025: “We must ask the challenging question: Is it time for South Africa to start nationwide vaccination of cattle for Foot-and-Mouth Disease?”

Onderstepoort
The subsidiary question is the feasibility of doing so, and the capacity to make it happen. The decline at Onderstepoort was noted in the 2022 biosecurity report. It said that despite Onderstepoort claiming a capacity to produce 90 million doses of vaccine annually (all vaccine types), it managed on average only 22 million. It also drew attention to an apparent failure to spend money allocated for its upgrading, and to extended periods of not having reinvested in maintenance and capital improvement (which “points to poor management and poor financial planning”). It also diplomatically referred to “contestation” over the true state of the facility, with the facility claiming it was meeting demand, and stakeholders disputing this claim.

Few public figures have been more vocal on this than Athol Trollip, ActionSA MP and a farmer himself. He has repeatedly noted that close to R500 million was allocated to OBP for modernisation purposes, but it is disturbingly unclear what has become of it. “The bitter irony of the current crisis,” he wrote in a News24 commentary, “is that the very institutions legally responsible for controlling state-controlled diseases are the ones that have destroyed their own capacity. Onderstepoort Biological Products and the Agricultural Research Council (ARC) were once world-class institutions with advanced vaccine manufacturing capability. Today, their world class status has been reduced to a memory, with direct consequences for national biosecurity and food production.”

It’s worth noting that the batch of vaccines recently produced to great fanfare amounted to fewer than 13 000 doses. This was, admittedly, a pilot batch, and the intention is to escalate production to 20 000 a week by March, and to 200 000 a week by 2027. The celebration of this milestone has been somewhat tempered by the observations of respected veterinarian Dr Danie Odendaal (recently dropped from the ministerial advisory panel on the disease) that the vaccine had been developed years previously and registered in 2022 – at considerable public expense – but had not been manufactured. It was a “national disgrace”.

The ARC announced the launch of an FMD vaccine – the link does not display it, but an image, apparently genuine, has been circulating on social media.

In practical terms, the envisaged output of the South African vaccine is simply not up to vaccinating the national herd, so these vaccines are to be complemented by importing vaccines from Argentina and Turkey.

But further confusion has arisen in the latter regard. Local agents had been appointed to handle the import of foreign vaccines; Minister Steenhuisen stated emphatically In a recent television interview that there was no truth to speculation that such private involvement would be excluded. Mere days later, Design Biologix received communication from Argentina’s Biogénesis Bagó (for which it had been acting as the South African agent) stating that it was withdrawing its letter of authorisation. South Africa’s government, Biogénesis Bagó said, preferred to work “directly, without intermediaries”.

It’s hard to see in this anything other than the government reverting to an ethos of control, despite not having demonstrated much capacity to use it constructively in the course of the epizootic. Some chatter has suggested that this could be a means for a state-owned enterprise to profit off a national crisis – a cynicism that, unfortunately, is informed by much of the country’s recent history.

The Pirbright (dis)connection
Meanwhile, another concerning aspect to the outbreak has been the relationship between South Africa and the Pirbright Institute in the United Kingdom. Pirbright is a reference lab for cataloguing strains of FMD. When an outbreak occurs, the host country is expected to send samples for analysis. South Africa had not submitted anything to it since 2011. In fact, it was only in the latter half of January 2026 that it did so – again, nearly a year after the outbreak.

Why was this? According to Minister Steenhuisen, while he didn’t think it advisable to have ceased supplying samples to Pirbright, doing so “wouldn’t have helped us”. South Africa had sufficient capacity to match whatever Pirbright could offer.

Yet once the samples were dispatched, he changed the messaging: “By sending our latest FMD virus strains to Pirbright, South Africa is ensuring the millions of vaccine doses being procured are scientifically proven to protect our national herd.”

The locus of concern is that Pirbright’s function is not only to conduct research for its own sake, but to determine how a given strain of FMD might interact with available vaccines. Given that until very recently, South Africa has had no FMD vaccine manufacturing capacity – and so was dependent on vaccines produced elsewhere – it is difficult to see why an analysis from the premier international institute on the disease would not have been sought.

But, as Emma Kean of Intelact, remarks: “Nothing that state has done in this outbreak makes any sense, unfortunately.”

Broken trust
Trollip’s wider point is worth restating: the failure to deal with FMD thus far raises significant questions about the capacity of the state to manage the outbreak – and indeed, the entire premise of the existing model.

These sentiments were roundly echoed by the farmers who provided their insights for this article, and not just in relation to the FMD outbreak, but stretching back across numerous failings, encompassing infrastructure, security and veterinary services. His frustration evident, Paul* comments: “Anything run by the state is a cock-up. They’ve known about this outbreak for years. And in all the other diseases controlled by the state, we’re seeing problems. Dip tanks are not being inspected. We’re seeing spikes in rabies.”

Indeed, even with the best will in the world, the existing protocols are not workable. The state-centric model assumes resources, expertise, functioning systems and – probably above all – limited localised outbreaks that could quickly be isolated and dealt with. While that may have described the situation in 2000, it is no longer the case.

The notion that state vets should be responsible for vaccination is unfeasible in view of their numbers and also the protocols under which they operate – reasonable enough to counter the risk of transmitting the virus, but ill-suited to dealing with something of the magnitude that South Africa is facing. “Look, I’ve got nothing against the state vets,” explains Derek*, “but they haven’t got the manpower. When my herd was infected, they got here quickly, and spent two days working vaccinating them. But then they can’t go onto another farm for five days. You can’t get ahead of it like this.”

Concerns around the reach of the state veterinary services has at times been conjoined with doubts about the ability of state channels in general to handle such a project. Says Paul*: “The minister wants state vets to do this, but they don’t have the capacity. And there are real issues with the way the vaccine is handled. To keep a dose effective, you have to keep it at a suitable temperature. But this cold chain gets broken, and that’s why some of the doses of the BVI (Botswana Vaccine Institute) vaccine aren’t working. I even have a neighbour who received his doses frozen solid.”

Noone less than the minister has provided some confirmation of this. Speaking at the Foot and Mouth Disease Indaba in Roodeplaat near Pretoria, Steenhuisen said the recent wave of outbreaks had exposed a “response system stretched to its limits,” citing breakdowns in communication, vaccine delays and confusion over movement controls as key failures.
So, where to from here?
As this article was being written, the FMD epizootic was raging on, the focus of efforts and the keystone of success resting with a vaccine rollout. “We’re a long way from over. If they don’t give us the right vaccines, FMD will be rife. It’s moving at a hell of a rate,” says Paul*.

Sandy la Marque, CEO of Kwanalu, the provincial agricultural body in KwaZulu-Natal, set out for the Daily Friend a list of issues that had driven or aggravated the outbreak, most of which remained unresolved. The submission to Pirbright had been delayed; there was no clarity on the role of the private sector and of farmers in the rollout of vaccines – of which there was a “critical shortage currently in the country”. There were failures in respect of clear and fair controls of movement of livestock. Clarity was lacking on the necessary traceability systems and “actual” requirements to be internationally compliant to preserve market access and work towards regaining FMD-free status. There has also been no short-term relief for farmers facing ruin.  There is, she says, “too much talk and not enough action; the task teams and working groups appear disconnected from the reality of what our members are facing.”

There is no precedent for this outbreak in living memory, and the response of the state has been inadequate. Currently, a coalition of three organisations – Sakeliga, the Southern African Agricultural Initiative (SAAI), and Free State Agriculture – have launched a legal challenge seeking to confirm that the private sector is not prohibited from procuring and administering vaccines. Steenhuisen has responded that this action would undermine the law and delay the action necessary to bring the crisis to a conclusion.

Reflecting on the perspective of her organization, Sandy La Marque says: “There are more questions than answers. Our participation in numerous forums remains ongoing, with questions being asked, solutions proposed, and answers sought.” And while Kwanalu has not joined the court action, she added: “Kwanalu has consistently said that litigation remains an option, and this is not ruled out.” 

As the court case suggests, the chief point of contention – certainly from the vantage point of the farming community – is the role that private actors might play in those areas where the state has assumed a near total dominance. Minister Steenhuisen has said that he welcomes their participation, saying that they have been included in the response from the outset and would assist in the rollout of the vaccination programme. The department has a 10-year plan to win back FMD-free status, and the minister has also insisted that “without centralised monitoring and state-led control over the process, the country will fail to achieve this goal”. He has warned darkly of a “vaccine free-for-all”, hinting at a situation in which there were no restrictions on procuring and administering vaccines.

According to a report in the Financial Mail: “It seems that the state wants to retain control of policy and implementation but may allow farmers to use their own vets to administer the vaccines, subject to regulation.”

A prominent (even dominant) role for the state is not unjustifiable in principle – indeed, it may an eminently prudent course of action. Dr Brückner, for example, cautioned last year that the vaccines used to combat the virus needed to be of suitable quality, and matched to the strain. If inappropriate or poorly manufactured vaccines were used, this could introduce new strains and aggravate the epizootic. This is in line with guidelines from the OIE.

However, returning to the theme recently, Dr Brückner clarified that this does not mean that the state had to undertake the vaccination process, but rather that it needed to supervise it. This would seem closely aligned with the positions articulated by the parties taking the government to court.

At the moment, farmers are not in a position even to administer the vaccine – if indeed it were available. This is a distressing situation for many in the farming community. Farmers who discussed the matter with the Daily Friend were emphatic that they were best placed to vaccinate their animals, and were already doing so for other conditions; they also indicated a willingness to assist with vaccinating the cattle of subsistence farmers. “Farmers are prepared to do it themselves. We do this sort of thing for other serious conditions, like Contagious Abortion – and we can purchase it ourselves,” says Derek*. “They need to hand the responsibilities over to farmers and private vets. There is no reason not to allow us to do it,” remarks Paul*.

SAAI chairman Theo de Jager, meanwhile, argued in a communication with the Daily Friend that the apparent fixation on control went against positive precedents set elsewhere, such as Brazil: “The department is hell bent to control every aspect of the blanket vaccination campaign. Farmers are looking for the shortest route between the manufacturers of vaccines and their cattle. They are adamant that that route is not running via the state. While South Africa only has to vaccinate 14 million cattle, Brazil had close to 300 million, and they got their FMD-free status back on 29 May last year. But under the auspices of OIE, the Brazilian farmers and their workers and volunteers were allowed to vaccinate their own cattle, while much of the logistics, storage and manufacturing were privatised. We will now import vaccines from one of those private manufacturers. So, there is nothing in law or regulations which stands in the way of farmers vaccinating their own cattle and that is what we seek a court judgment for.”

Moreover, as revealed in the experience of some farmers already, concerns have been expressed about the handling of vaccine stocks and the integrity of the cold chain. For Dr Brückner, this is of existential importance, not only to the efficacy of the vaccines themselves, but to whether South Africa will ever be able to rid itself of FMD and regain its coveted FMD-free status.

How – indeed, whether – the state will open up the vaccination programme remains to be seen. At present, work on this has barely started, despite the depth of the crisis and the time over which it has persisted. What is clear is that the relationship between the state and the farming community is fractious, with confidence by the latter in the former on a downward trajectory.

Hence, Johan*’s remarks at the opening of this piece. The FMD outbreak has revealed a dire conjunction of complacency, incapacity and the culmination of system atrophy that has afflicted the ecosystem within which farming has to operate. For the foreseeable future, South Africa’s farming economy will confront an implacable viral foe, and probably some hard years ahead. As Johan* puts it: “The reality is that we have to live with it from now on.”

Meanwhile, in this State of the Nation Address, President Cyril Ramaphosa announced: “We have classified Foot and Mouth Disease as a national disaster and will be mobilising all necessary capabilities within the state to deal with this crisis.”

South Africa’s farmers have grounds to be sceptical of this promise.

* Names have been changed at the request of the individuals concerned.

Terence Corrigan is the Project Manager at the Institute, where he specialises in work on property rights, as well as land and mining policy

https://www.biznews.com/rational-perspective/corrigan-pt-ii-fmd-crisis

This article was first published on the Daily Friend.