FMD Outbreak Poses Major Threat to South Africa’s Stability

Agriculture Minister John Steenhuisen has announced a plan to deal with the current foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) outbreak but an increasing number of analysts, often outside of agriculture, and particularly those with expertise on national security, worry the plan will not work and that if it fails that will trigger a threat to South Africa’s internal stability.

The concern is that if the disease keeps spreading, the damage will quickly expand beyond farms. Businesses may begin to default on loans; mass rural retrenchments may take place; food price inflation may tempt urban protests and xenophobic riots; the capital base of poor rural people may be destroyed; retailers may turn to imports, cutting South African producers off from their own domestic market; and the collective economic, social, and political consequences may be very destabilising for the country.

FMD is a fast-spreading virus that affects cloven-hooved animals, especially cattle, but also sheep, goats, and pigs. Sick animals develop a fever and become weak, drooling heavily. Painful sores form in the mouth and the skin peels off the tongue, making it hard to eat. Blisters form on the feet, especially around the hoof line, causing severe lameness and, in extreme cases, the hooves to fall off. Animals may struggle to stand or walk, lose weight, and stop producing normally. Calves can die. Conception rates may fall sharply and milk production plumet. Udders may become blocked, causing great pain as the skin comes off the teats and cows cannot be milked. Even when animals survive, farmers still lose money because production drops and trade controls are imposed.

Collapse

South Africa’s veterinary authorities used to contain FMD to a small high-risk zone in the north of the country, where the disease is endemic to buffalo. Controls depended on strict movement rules, monitoring, and a fast, effective response when cases appeared. But those controls were allowed to collapse, allowing the disease to spread southward as the state failed to act to stop it. A crisis situation has now resulted where there are widespread disease outbreaks across several provinces.

The seriousness of the disease, and international concern at its spread, means that it is classified as a state-controlled disease. Cases must be reported and state veterinary services must take the lead in combating outbreaks. Private actors and vets are restricted by law in terms of the measures they may take to combat the disease.

Historically, quarantine was the key mechanism used by the state to combat what rare or freak outbreaks occurred south of the control line. A quarantine zone was created around a farm or business or area where the disease has been identified and all trade in animals within that zone restricted – in practice, cutting off the cash flow of the businesses within that zone. Such a zone may be maintained for a period upwards of a year given the protocols involved in ensuring that that the disease has been eradicated within it.

That was manageable when outbreaks were rare and small. But the same response tempts an economic and political catastrophe when applied at a much larger scale.

Livestock farming has a seasonal cash flow dynamic and farmers may sell weaner calves at a particular point in the year. If that happens during a quarantine, cash flow is throttled. As a consequence, the risk of loan defaults rises, posing a crisis for banks and the country’s broader financial system. If properties and businesses are repossessed, the fallout will be considerable and banks may sit with distressed assets in disease zones that cannot produce an income.

Mass staff retrenchments may follow against the background of South Africa’s very high rural unemployment rates. That is sure to raise the political temperature in the country and further depress voter support for the African National Congress (ANC), which has now fallen to below 50% in rural areas.

Inflation

Quarantines, increased mortality, and lower conception rates may restrict the supply of meat (and dairy) entering the market with the effect of driving up prices. Rising food prices have a clear historical link in South Africa to mass protest events in urban areas. The public may also become concerned at the safety of local food products given the horrific symptoms of the disease, although the products sourced from positive animals are perfectly safe to consume.

Retailers, fearing empty shelves and concerned customers, have already begin to hedge themselves by exploring import alternatives to South African agricultural products. Local producers may therefore begin to lose domestic market share to imports and will have to compete aggressively on price to win back that share, placing further pressure on margins.

Because of these consequences desperate individual farmers may become reluctant to report outbreaks or to allow veterinary services access to their properties. For many of them the state’s cure is worse than the disease and they may therefore look to manage their herds through an outbreak. State veterinary resources are already stretched, with protocols requiring staff who have been in contact with positive cases to isolate themselves for around a week, compounding staff shortages.

There is also a sense that the virus may be showing clinical symptoms in game, which was previously thought unlikely. This means that quarantining domestic animals, even if the economic and political fallout could be overcome, may be ineffective in curbing the spread of FMD.

The point very much is that while the state may insist that this is a state-controlled disease that only the state may treat and respond to, control has already long been lost and may not be regained.

Mass Vaccination

Mass vaccination may now be the only workable way to slow and stop the disease. But vaccination is not being rolled out at the scale needed. One reason, again, is policy –as only the state may source and administer vaccines, and farmers or private veterinarians can face prosecution if they vaccinate independently.

Vaccines must match the strain of the virus circulating in the country. It is unclear what those strains are, as the state has failed for over a decade to submit the requisite samples to a central global authority. (It was treaty-bound to do so, but the collapse of state veterinary services saw the process cease.)

It is not a simple case, therefore, of obtaining any off-the-shelf vaccine, and reports to date are that available vaccines may be ineffective.

Local vaccine supply has also failed, because the state’s key agricultural vaccine producer has in practice collapsed amid years-long allegations of fraud, corruption, and mismanagement.

The scale of the requisite vaccine rollout is massive and boosters may be needed every three months. The implication is that South Africa needs around 100 million doses over the next 24 months. There is little confidence that the state has the track record on this issue, nor the skills, resources, or management ability to pull that off.

The most realistic solution is regulatory change. Farming businesses and private veterinarians should be allowed to source and administer vaccines, under sensible regulation for reporting and tracking, while the state focuses on oversight and enforcement. The agricultural industry, like any private entity, is used to managing crises and can move faster and with greater resourcefulness and efficiency than government systems. Private industry will also see to the vaccination of cattle held by people in poor rural communities as it is in the industry’s interest to do so (around a third of all South Africa’s cattle are held by small scale farmers in poor communities).

The owners of these cattle do not have the resources to nurse their herds through outbreaks of disease (all manner of medicines from anti-inflammatories to antibiotics need to be expertly applied) and receive scant support from the state. As a consequence, large numbers of these animals may die, wiping out a chunk of the capital base of those individuals and breeding great anger at the state.

South Africa’s historical status as a foot-and-mouth free economy is likely to be lost and will have to be regained by vaccination. That is a harsh concession but one forced by the facts on the ground. If policy does not change, the disease will get further out of hand from where, far beyond questions of farming and animal welfare, it becomes an existential threat to the rural economy, the stability of the financial sector, the food industry, and South Africa’s political stability.