South Africa’s foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) pandemic, which has inflicted substantial harm on its livestock industries, is probably here to stay. This depressing message was delivered at a panel discussion held at Grain SA’s Nampo Harvest Day at Bothaville in the Free State this week.

Speaking on the issue, Karan Beef’s senior feedlot veterinarian Dr Dirk Verwoerd stated: "We have to make peace with the fact that we have to live with this disease. But we have to live with it in a different way than historically. We cannot unscramble a scrambled egg.”

South Africa was, outside of the Kruger National Park, FMD-free for decades, with control maintained by assiduous monitoring, along with swift quarantine and treatment programmes where occasional outbreaks occurred.

South Africa’s current crisis began in 2019. Delayed responses, insufficient expertise, and the virtual collapse of once-excellent institutions such as the Onderstepoort veterinary facility undermined South Africa’s response, and the outbreak ultimately became a national one.

Famers have expressed outrage at the slow response of the state to the outbreak, even as its scale and the limitations of the government’s response became apparent. South Africa’s farmers have taken severe damage, consumers face higher meat prices, and South Africa’s access to export markets has been hit.

Verwoerd said that with no prospect of completely ridding the country of FMD, the focus needed to be on mass vaccination. Many countries were willing to accept South African beef from stock that had been vaccinated.

Still, adapting to this reality, achieving the necessary vaccination levels and recognition for this in foreign markets would take a decade. The industry could stabilise the occurrence of outbreaks within two years.

Verwoerd expressed pessimism about South Africa ever being recognised as FMD-free again: “It’s out of that situation now, and it will never go back.”

Feedlots would need to continue vaccinating indefinitely, since any outbreak would spread “like wildfire”.

Minister of Agriculture John Steenhuisen, who also addressed the event, said that dealing with the outbreak had created an unprecedented challenge for the country and the industry.

He commented: "What we have essentially been doing is trying to repair an aeroplane in mid-air. We are in the midst of a crisis, and there was a 180-degree change in strategy to a mass vaccination campaign.”

He added that South Africa’s collapsed biosecurity systems demanded that the country “put together a new biosecurity system in the midst of a biosecurity crisis. We’ve had to really feel our way through this.”

Steenhuisen has become a focal point for criticism from the farming community for the state’s tardy and inadequate response, and also for a refusal to allow farmers to undertake vaccination procurement and administration themselves. He has been accused of being out of touch and incapable of dealing with the problem.

The controversy around Steenhuisen’s handling of the FMD outbreak was also widely seen as a factor in his decision not to seek re-election as Democratic Alliance leader.