FMD | ‘The state’s system is unworkable’ – private veterinarian

The fact that foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) has now been confirmed in southern KwaZulu-Natal is yet another of numerous examples confirming that the state’s system for trying to manage this disease is a failure. A private production animal veterinarian says he cannot understand the state’s insistence on relying on reactive instead of proactive measures.

By Lloyd Phillips, senior journalist at African Farming and Landbouweekblad

Text: A foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) outbreak was recently confirmed among communal cattle in southern KwaZulu-Natal’s Umzimkhulu Local Municipality. This has, in effect, made a narrow belt of central KwaZulu-Natal a final albeit tenuous bastion of the province that officially remains free of this disease.

It is a mere 103km as the crow flies between Umzimkhulu in the southwest and the next nearest official FMD outbreak at Albert Falls in the northeast. Only 44km northeast of Albert Falls is the nearest border of the approximately four-million-hectare FMD disease management area that encompasses most of KwaZulu-Natal’s eastern half. Then there are the FMD outbreaks in the Winterton/Bergville district, about 110km north of Albert Falls.

FMD cases KZN_RMIS — Even though foot-and-mouth is a state-controlled disease, since 2021 it has continued to spread like wildfire across KwaZulu-Natal and now includes at least one confirmed case in the southwest of the province. Image: RMIS

Dr Dave Clowes is a private production animal veterinarian with EG Veterinary Services in KwaZulu-Natal’s Kokstad district, close to Umzimkhulu. He works with many commercial beef and dairy farmers in the province’s southwest, which also links him with local state animal health authorities and with the private sector’s Red Meat Industry Services (RMIS).

Clowes is frustrated at what he perceives as the state’s seeming inflexibility to allow the private sector the freedom to more independently and proactively manage the threat of FMD. He is equally frustrated with the state’s cumbersome and disjointed bureaucracy that seems, in some cases, to support or protect personal and/or political agendas rather than the mandated good of the people.

Also read: New FMD outbreak puts Creighton’s 35 000 dairy cattle in jeopardy

Theoretical but not Practical Control

Clowes’ concerns, complaints and confusion – many of which have previously been expressed to African Farming by other private sector veterinarians – include:

local state veterinarians are given proverbially “small toolboxes” with which they are expected to achieve positive outcomes for big issues;
unless commercial farms test positive for FMD, the state will not proactively vaccinate them, even if these farms fall fully or partly within the state’s typical 10km radius quarantine zone around confirmed cases of FMD;
it can take up to three weeks for the state to provide results for blood tests to check for FMD. If the results are positive, only then are the state’s vaccination protocols triggered. By then the disease may already have spread much farther;
the state seems to frequently and inexplicably have insufficient quantities of the FMD vaccines that it must import from Botswana;
although the state insists on managing control of FMD, it is incapable of managing the movements of livestock that are the primary cause of new outbreaks of FMD in different areas;
in KwaZulu-Natal, if a private veterinarian wants to apply for special dispensation to proactively vaccinate commercial farms that are at high risk because they neighbour a confirmed outbreak of FMD, the veterinarian must travel to Pietermaritzburg in central KwaZulu-Natal to meet with state animal health authorities to request this special dispensation. If the state expands an existing FMD quarantine zone, the private veterinarian must again travel to Pietermaritzburg to apply for special dispensation for other commercial farms that are now placed at high risk of infection; and
if the state grants special dispensation to private veterinarians to proactively vaccinate these farms, the state then imposes detrimentally restrictive controls and requirements on these proactively vaccinated commercial farms.

Fewer Livestock Owners Reporting Suspected FMD

“I know for a fact that because of these illogical and unreasonable controls and requirements, there are many commercial beef farms in KwaZulu-Natal that have contracted FMD but opted not to report it to the authorities. The farmers have just let their animals recover from the infections and then gone about their business,” says Clowes.

“There is no common sense being applied in the overall strategy that is being adopted at the moment.”

Also, like many others before him, Clowes says the state must concede its failures and urgently accede to the private sector manufacturing, distributing and proactively administering appropriate FMD vaccines. The state’s mostly reactive and slow controls have not worked.

Clowes also believes that any livestock owner wanting to participate in the formal red meat value chain must be compelled to register their operations and all their animals on a centralised database. It must be law that no unregistered animals may enter the formal value chain.

“Minister of agriculture John Steenhuisen must deal decisively with any of his department’s officials who are opposed to or who are obstructing efforts to collaboratively, proactively and effectively manage FMD.”

Clowes wishes to highlight that even though state animal health authorities in the Umzimkhulu area have the proverbial “small toolbox” to work with, “we would like to thank them for professional prompt action within the mandates allowed them. They were vaccinating Umzimkhulu’s communal cattle within a day of receiving the positive FMD result.”