Photo for illustration: (Elisma van der Watt/Maroela Media)
Free State Agriculture (FL) has welcomed the instruction of the Pretoria High Court which compels the Minister of Agriculture to give deadlines for a scheme that will allow private vaccination against foot-and-mouth disease (FMD). The organization labels this as a significant shift from its department’s previous position.
Francois Wilken, president of VL, says the court ordered the minister to postpone the scheme’s deadline for promulgation, which was initially last Tuesday, to 28 April. The minister was ordered to pay costs, with the court sharply criticizing delays and last-minute submissions by the Department of Agriculture.
The development follows an urgent application submitted by VL, Sakeliga and Saai to prevent the government from obstructing the private procurement and administration of BKS vaccines.
“Until today, the minister has opposed private vaccination and maintained under oath that only state-directed vaccination by authorized officials is allowed. However, in a submission to the court at the last minute, a draft scheme was submitted which, for the first time, proposes that private vaccination may be carried out under the guidance of private veterinarians and without direct state supervision,” said Wilken.
“This sudden shift confirms what we have argued all along, namely that there is no legal basis to prevent the private sector from participating in FMD vaccination.”
Francois Rossouw, chief executive of Saai, says the court order and accompanying costs order emphasize once again how far removed the bureaucratic world of the public service and the seriousness and urgency of livestock farming are from each other.
“While more and more farms are struggling financially every day, after three months the minister brings a draft framework for action (an Article 10 vaccination scheme) to court as his solution, which was rejected by his own department a week ago. The current outbreak has been a huge threat for three, four years and yet the minister was only able to present a draft minutes before the hearing.”
Rossouw says the more than three months since the agricultural industry tried to help the department with the content of the vaccination scheme have been unaffordably expensive, with hundreds of dairies, stud breeders, commercial herds and small-scale farmers sitting with losses from which they cannot recover.
The case was in court on Tuesday after the minister could not indicate in more than a month what the legal grounds are for his insistence that all aspects of the vaccination campaign must be controlled by the state.
“It is now clear that those legal grounds do not exist, but are modeled on an ideological starting point of central state control rather than private initiative. It is sad that a DA minister endorses ANC ideals of central control. Farmers suspect the state of its interference being designed to accumulate costs so that tenderpreneurs with political connections and parasitic officials can take undue advantage, regardless of the consequences for livestock farmers on their farms.
“Overall state control has plunged the livestock industry into the biggest existential crisis ever, and although there are some agricultural organizations that support it, Saai and its network partners’ mandate is to prevent central control from being presented as the only solution.”
Wilken says that while the draft scheme is a step in the right direction, VL is of the opinion that it remains incomplete and still cause for serious concern. Provisions that centralize vaccine procurement and grant broad discretionary powers to the minister create the risk that the same restrictions that have already caused serious disruption in the agricultural sector may continue.
“The fact that this proposal only emerged under litigation pressure is worrying. Farmers cannot afford policy paralysis while the disease spreads and losses mount.”
The court’s intervention now places clear legal obligations and deadlines on the minister – a critical step towards restoring certainty in the livestock industry, says Wilken.
AgriSA also said on Tuesday that it was regrettable that the foot and mouth issue and the vaccination of animals required court intervention during an animal health crisis.