Foot and mouth disease (FMD) can be controlled in more than one way. But where a country chooses vaccination as its route – as South Africa has – the principle is always the same. Enough animals must be immune at the same time to achieve a condition where the virus runs out of hosts and cannot spread anymore. Every country that has beaten foot and mouth disease by vaccination has done it on that principle.

South Africa has the vaccine, the veterinarians, the cold-chain networks, and the farmers willing to act. What it does not yet have is a plan built around that principle. The state has chosen to run the vaccination campaign through one supply channel that it controls. The disease does not respect the pace that channel can manage.

Why Slow Vaccination Cannot Work

The goal is not to vaccinate a number of cattle eventually. It is to make enough of them immune together at the same time.

South Africa has about 14 million cattle. To stop the spread of disease, you need roughly 80% of them – about 11 million – to be immune at the same time. By 4 June, the FMD Industry Coordination Council's dashboard, compiled by AgriCulture South Africa from provincial Joint Operations Committee submissions, recorded just over 4.1 million animals vaccinated: under a third of the herd, counted up since February, and not a measure of how many are protected today.

It is worse than it sounds. In a high-challenge environment like an active outbreak, durable protection depends on a completed vaccination course, often requiring two doses about a month apart, and it wanes over the months that follow. The animals that were vaccinated first are already losing protection and millions have never yet been reached. The number actually immune at any one moment is lower still, and only a fraction of the required 11 million.

And the campaign is not catching up. The same dashboard shows about 93 000 animals vaccinated in the past week, and the pace slowing. At that rate, the goal of reaching even 11 million is more than a year away — while the immunity given today fades in six months. A rollout this slow cannot catch its own tail.

Vaccinate slowly, in different districts at different times, and you never build a wall. You build islands of immunity in a sea of disease. The tide keeps rising and, given enough time, the virus swallows the islands.

The Experts Are Not Divided On This

This is not a contested farmer's opinion. It is the settled view of the people who decide these things.

Dr Gideon Brückner, who served nine years as president of the Scientific Commission for Animal Diseases at the World Organisation for Animal Health (WOAH) – the body that assesses countries' applications for FMD-free status – told a recent veterinary conference that 80% vaccination delivers, at best, 63% herd immunity, still short of what it takes to stop the disease. He also warned that even 80% national vaccination achieved over 18 months, with the virus still circulating, cannot earn FMD-free status. Slow is not merely less effective. It is disqualifying.

The government's own technical advisers agree. A paper by a member of the Ministerial Task Team, with senior veterinary scientists, warns of "a false narrative that the aim is to vaccinate 80% of the animals in South Africa when, in fact, the aim is for immunity in 80% of the country's susceptible species". It calls for "a tight vaccination window of four to eight weeks" and notes that because not every animal responds, you may need to vaccinate almost the entire herd to reach 80% immunity.

The science is not the problem. The plan is.

What a Programme That Works Actually Requires

Strip the argument down and three things have to be true. Each tells you something about who should be doing what.

First, vaccination has to be compulsory. WOAH's own requirements for FMD-free-with-vaccination status call for "compulsory systematic vaccination to achieve adequate population immunity". A voluntary scheme may assist individual farms, but it cannot be the backbone of a WOAH-facing national immunity programme. Mandating vaccination is a proper and necessary act of the state. It is exactly the kind of thing the state should be doing.

Second, it has to happen in tight windows. Whole regions must be vaccinated inside four to eight weeks, not rolled out across a year. Setting those windows and enforcing them is, again, the state's job — a matter of regulation, not logistics.

Third, it has to be repeated. Because immunity fades at about six months, this is not a campaign that ends in December. It is a synchronised revaccination of some 14 million cattle, inside a tight window, every six months, for years – until the country can move to zoning and eventually eradication, as Brazil and Bolivia did over two decades. That rhythm is the heart of the matter. No single state channel can move that volume at that speed once, let alone twice a year, indefinitely. The arithmetic of the disease makes standing private capacity a necessity, not a preference.

That is where the current plan breaks down. The state can mandate vaccination, set the window and police the records. It cannot be the only pipe through which every dose must pass. If the country has to vaccinate millions of animals inside tight windows, again and again, vaccine must move through every capable channel: private vets, producer organisations, and the agricultural supply networks farmers already use. The state should set the rules. The private sector should help move the volume.

The Bottom Line

The test of this programme is whether it can produce measurable population immunity in the field, and prove it to WOAH.

South Africa is not short of vaccines, veterinary skill, or willing hands. It is short of a plan that matches the biology of the disease it is fighting.

The disease sets the terms. It demands speed, near-total coverage, tight windows, and repetition every six months. A campaign forced through a single state-controlled channel cannot deliver those things. A campaign the state regulates, and the private sector helps execute, can.

The state should regulate the fight against foot and mouth disease. It should not try to be the only one fighting it.

Andrew Morphew is a dairy farmer in the KwaZulu-Natal Midlands. He holds a B.Com (Hons) from Rhodes University and writes on agricultural biosecurity and policy.