John Steenhuisen, Minister of Agriculture, receives the vaccine. (Photo: Department of Agriculture)
Free State Agriculture (FL), Sakeliga and Saai brought an urgent High Court application on Tuesday to prevent the government from blocking the private procurement and administration of vaccines against foot-and-mouth disease.
Francois Wilken, president of VL, says court-prescribed mediation in which the parties concerned participated last week was unsuccessful and the case is now being heard on an urgent basis in the High Court in Pretoria.
Sakeliga says Tuesday’s hearing deals with the first phase of the legal strategy, which includes an interdict that prohibits the state from preventing private individuals and entities from administering registered or authorized foot-and-mouth vaccines to livestock, and that prohibits the state from interfering in the contractual relationships between those who legally import the vaccine and their suppliers.
Francois Rossouw, CEO of Sai, says the agricultural industry is in the middle of a financial disaster. “Farmers are simply asking not to be prevented from protecting their own animals and not to be deprived of their right to make a living. When the state’s ability is limited, it cannot be constitutionally justified to block private ability,” he says.
Wilken says that with the exception of the Minister of Agriculture’s affirmative affidavit, all legal documents have been submitted. According to him, a review application, which forms the second phase of the process, will follow at a later stage.
The parties bring the court application after the “minister of agriculture’s failure to provide a legal basis for his ban on the private procurement and administration of BKS vaccines”.
The organizations say that agricultural officials’ interference in private vaccine import agreements has already caused great uncertainty and significant production losses in the agricultural sector.
Wilken says nothing in the application will prevent John Steenhuisen, the minister, or other officials from fulfilling their legal duties or from fighting the disease. “If the application is successful, farmers and other livestock owners will immediately be able to have their own cattle – and other livestock – vaccinated with their own resources, with the necessary reporting as required.
“It remains inexplicable why the minister opposes a parallel approach, where the state and the private sector can fight the disease together, rather than limiting the process exclusively to the department’s capacity.”
The application follows what the parties label as Steenhuisen’s failure to provide a legal basis for his ban on the acquisition and administration of vaccines by the private sector, and the adverse interference by agricultural officials in private vaccine import agreements.
Dunevax Biotech, the biotechnology company that imported the 1.5 million Dollvet vaccine doses against foot-and-mouth disease, said two weeks ago that the product was already at Onderstepoort Biological Products, but that the government had not yet paid him for it.