Foot and mouth vaccine. (Photo: Department of Agriculture)
The government’s latest plan to tackle foot-and-mouth disease creates a monopoly on the procurement and distribution of vaccines.
AfriForum believes that although overhead monitoring by the government is necessary, it cannot force farmers to participate in a scheme whose costs and compliance regulations are still unknown.
“In the meantime, due to the government’s centralist approach, many cattle now have to be vaccinated in advance after they have been re-infected due to a delay in the second round of vaccinations,” said Lambert de Klerk, manager of environmental affairs at AfriForum.
AfriForum believes that the current damage, uncertainty and re-infection risk faced by farmers could probably be limited or even prevented if the government created the space for farmers, private veterinarians and the agricultural industry to obtain vaccines themselves and implement vaccinations faster and more widely.
“The problem is not that farmers did not want to act, but rather that the government wanted to exercise control over a crisis that spread faster than the relevant departments’ administrative divisions could keep up for too long.”
Although the new scheme encourages cooperation between the public and private sectors, it still poses many problems for farmers, De Klerk believes. “Farmers have to pay for the vaccines and their application themselves, although the costs involved are not yet known and subsidies and cost sharing are still only a possibility.”
According to De Klerk, this means that farmers are now expected to pay themselves for a vaccination process that could have taken place earlier and faster if they themselves had been allowed to approach the private sector. “The government’s failure to act effectively with this crisis has left the agricultural industry needlessly vulnerable.”
In addition, participation in this scheme is labeled as “voluntary”. However, it appears that farmers who do not participate in the scheme but do need vaccines will not be able to obtain them. Farmers who do not cooperate with this scheme and its requirements also run the risk of having their farms quarantined.
“In a crisis like this, time is everything. Each week’s delay leads to more animals being exposed, creates greater uncertainty and exacerbates economic damage. The private sector has the necessary knowledge, networks and logistical capacity to help more quickly, but they should have been allowed to do so earlier,” adds De Klerk.
AfriForum appealed to John Steenhuisen, the Minister of Agriculture, to remove all unnecessary obstacles for the participation of the private sector and to accept a practical, industry-driven emergency plan.
“Farmers should never be held hostage by a slow government process. If the government had made room for the private sector earlier, the problem could probably have been closer to a full-fledged solution.”