By Lloyd Phillips
The new cases of foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) in the country are making headlines and increasing pressure on the state to allow widespread proactive vaccination against this disease. But even with proactive vaccination, gaining control of this disease will take time. Brazil has succeeded in this and finally attained the FMD-free status without vaccination.
Brazil, the world’s largest beef-producing country, has recently been officially granted the international status of foot-and-mouth disease-free without vaccination. This comes after an almost 70-year struggle in which the Brazilian government, private sector experts, the country’s livestock owners, and even other South American governments and livestock farming organisations joined hands.
Brazil’s implementation of a comprehensive, widespread, continuous and proactive vaccination campaign against foot-and-mouth disease, initiated in the 1990s, may be their most remarkable joint effort.
According to sources who spoke to African Farming in both Brazil and South Africa, the dedication and support of Brazil’s government, as well as the public and private animal health experts and the livestock farmers, were crucially important. Control measures for the movement of livestock, the administration, monitoring and bookkeeping of vaccinations, and everyone’s willingness to work together towards a common goal have ultimately led to Brazil’s beef being largely accepted by any country that wants to buy it.
Health experts in South Africa’s private sector agree that the state’s current reactive and highly controlled vaccination programme against foot-and-mouth disease is clearly not successful. The vaccines used are also believed to obscure matters. In infection testing, it is difficult to distinguish between antibodies caused by vaccination and those caused by an actual foot-and-mouth infection.
This problem also makes some international trading partners reluctant to import South African livestock products.
According to Dr. Ariena Shepherd and some other private-sector veterinarians, the South African government should begin to allow the private sector to manufacture, proactively administer and monitor Diva-type vaccines against foot-and-mouth disease.
It is said to be much easier to distinguish antibodies caused by Diva vaccines from antibodies caused by a real infection. Its benefits include proactive protection against foot-and-mouth disease, improved differentiation and management of actual foot-and-mouth infections, the ability to compartmentalise areas where proactive vaccinations occurred, and the retention of international markets that are comfortable with accepting products from animals that were proactively vaccinated with Diva vaccines against foot-and-mouth disease.
