Pieter Mulder, the former leader of the Freedom Front Plus (FF+), is to blame for the current foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) crisis, says Agriculture Minister John Steenhuisen.

Steenhuisen was speaking at a media briefing this week, where he laid the blame for the current FMD outbreak at Mulder’s door.

Mulder served as deputy agriculture minister under Jacob Zuma from 2009 to 2014.

“The FF+ was in this department long before me. The FF+’s leader was deputy minister of agriculture. If you look at those ten years, that’s when the crisis at Onderstepoort began. A part of the mess that we are now cleaning up comes from that time. What did Pieter Mulder do when he was deputy minister of agriculture? What measures did he put in place against FMD?” Steenhuisen was quoted as saying.

Mulder countered the allegations and said while he was deputy minister the department had managed to restrict FMD to a part of northern KwaZulu-Natal. He said that it was only once he was no longer the deputy minister that the disease became more widespread.

This comes after a farmer-funded and farmer-led lobby group formed to highlight the FMD crisis in South Africa, FMD Response SA, said that the government’s current vaccination strategy had a high chance of failure.

In a statement the body said that the “probability of failure under the government's current approach to vaccination against foot-and-mouth disease is estimated by FMD Response SA to be between 90% and 95%” and that the government could not “mathematically achieve” the herd immunity required by the World Organisation for Animal Health for FMD-free status.

The body said: “The only way to stop the disease spreading is to ensure that the country’s 14 million cattle are vaccinated within a tight timeframe of six to eight weeks to ensure nearly all of the country’s cattle become immune to the virus, halting its spread. By contrast, the government aims to vaccinate 80% of South Africa’s cattle only by December 2026.”

“This timeline presents serious challenges, as some cattle will lose immunity when vaccine protection wanes after approximately six months, before other cattle are vaccinated, allowing the disease to continue spreading. Lessons from Argentina and Brazil's successful eradication of FMD have shown that cattle must be vaccinated within strict timeframes and boosted six months later to ensure widespread immunity that halts the virus.”

A spokesman for FMD Response SA, Andrew Morphew, said that the private sector was willing to assist in ensuring that the vaccination programme against FMD would succeed.

According to FMD Response SA the Department of Agriculture had “published a Section 10 scheme on Monday, which does make allowances for some measure of private partnerships in vaccination efforts. However, according to this plan, the state will still control all vaccine distribution.”

“This approach is a recipe for failure. As demonstrated by the successful vaccination campaigns of Brazil and Argentina, private distribution is essential to ensure vaccines reach farms timeously and are administered effectively at the farm level. Requiring the state to centrally control distribution leads to bottlenecks and delays,” said Morphew.

According to FMD Response SA, “A slow state-controlled rollout means South Africa will not be able to control the disease. Vaccination at speed and scale is only possible by activating private sector vaccine distribution.”

Sources who spoke to The Common Sense said that the pandemic had done great harm to milk, pork, and beef producers. Milk producers think that their output levels may be up to 20% lower for an extended period as a consequence of the virus. Pork producers have seen high levels of piglet deaths, crushing their already narrow margins. Beef producers with infected herds have seen pregnancy rates drop as low as 20%, way off the near 80% needed for their businesses to break even.