By Lloyd Phillips
Blurb: Legislation mandates only state animal health authorities may manage foot-and-mouth disease in South Africa. The state is also legally mandated to mark every animal it vaccinates against this disease, with a clearly visible “F” on its neck. However, there may possibly now be numerous vaccinated animals without this brand, in many supposedly “FMD-free” parts of the country.
Text: People who do not want to believe that foot-and-mouth disease is already widespread across South Africa, are simply “bluffing themselves”. Furthermore, it is suspected that there may be numerous animals that the state has vaccinated against this disease but then, for unknown reasons, did not properly brand them with an “F” on their neck before releasing them back to their respective owners.
This is according to dr. Ariena Shepherd, head of KwaZulu-Natal’s Animal Health Forum, who explains to African Farming that these latter animals can cause a range of unnecessary added complications in a situation where economically devastating foot-and-mouth is already increasingly out of control in South Africa.
African Farming has already frequently reported that, with the trivalent foot-and-mouth disease vaccine that the South African government currently imports from Botswana for the former’s use in its attempts to manage local outbreaks of this disease, it is extremely difficult for testing to differentiate between antibodies caused solely by this vaccine in an animal versus antibodies caused in response to an animal being infected by the foot-and-mouth disease virus.
Shepherd points out that this difficulty, in combination with the vaccinated animals possibly not being appropriately marked, also makes it extremely difficult for animal health authorities to accurately assess whether foot-and-mouth is spreading from a particular area or if it is truly contained.
Widespread illegal livestock movements
“We all know that the state’s measures to stop any livestock whatsoever from being moved out of a foot-and-mouth disease management area, are not working. So, not only can a genuinely foot-and-mouth-infected animal be quietly and illegally moved out of such areas, but so can animals that have been vaccinated against foot-and-mouth but that weren’t properly branded to show they’ve been vaccinated.”
Random surveillance testing by the private sector or by the state, of animals outside of a disease management area could, therefore, find foot-and-mouth antibodies in an animal that was previously vaccinated, not properly branded, and subsequently moved illegally to anywhere outside of a disease management area.
The inability to differentiate that these antibodies were caused by vaccine, and not by infection, could well result in the need for yet another part of South Africa’s livestock production sector to be quarantined, with the accompanying devastating economic impacts for the newly quarantined livestock farmers.
As African Farming has also frequently reported, there are already many hundreds, more likely thousands, of livestock owners within South Africa’s ever-increasing quarantine zones and disease management areas for foot-and-mouth. For most of these farmers, especially in KwaZulu-Natal, the state has reportedly still not yet provided the means for them to legally earn an income from their quarantined animals. Also, for many of these livestock owners, their animals are their only source of income.
“There are many ways for animals to illegally find their way out of a disease management area to, for example, a legitimate cattle sale and then into a feedlot or onto another farm outside of the disease management area. This animal could be infected with foot-and-mouth, but be asymptomatic while it is still shedding the virus. It could be vaccinated, but not properly branded. Either way, and as regulations now stand, it could cause huge problems.”
The cattle are already out of the kraal
Shepherd believes that trying to keep South Africa’s active foot-and-mouth disease infections confined to particular areas, is now an exercise in futility. Regulators, and the private livestock sector, need to accept that the only effective way forward is to firstly accept that this disease, whether active or inactive, is likely greatly widespread and, secondly, to therefore start allowing the private sector to proactively vaccinate their animals on a recurring basis.
“Preventative vaccinating against foot-and-mouth disease must become just another part of a livestock operation’s existing vaccination programme. It must become the new normal. To make things easier, private companies must be allowed to develop, manufacture and sell DIVA-type foot-and-mouth vaccines directly to private veterinarians for them to vaccinate their clients’ animals with.”
As previously reported, unlike with the foot-and-mouth vaccine currently used in South Africa, the antibodies resulting from a DIVA-type vaccine are comparatively easily differentiated from the antibodies resulting from genuine infection by foot-and-mouth.
“We need to move away from the situation where the state and Onderstepoort Biological Products (OBP) have a monopoly on selecting, sourcing, managing, supplying and administering foot-and-mouth vaccine. OBP is the middleman for sourcing the current vaccines from Botswana and is charging double what it pays for these vaccines.”
