Image Source: Farmers Weekly
Local – The Southern African Agri Initiative (SAAI) launched an urgent High Court application against the government, challenging legislation that prevented farmers from importing or administering foot-and-mouth disease vaccines independently.
The legal action came as South Africa’s agricultural sector grappled with what farmers called the worst animal health crisis in a century, an outbreak that triggered quarantines, halted livestock movements, and placed severe financial strain across the value chain.
At the heart of the dispute was a 1984 Act that mandated centralised state control over the vaccination programme, a system that SAAI CEO Francois Rossouw said was too slow to contain the spread.
The industry warned that South Africa could lose approximately R1.88 billion in export revenue in the current financial year alone as the disease continued to spread.
“This whole application is about: tell us where the current act that was written in 1984 says that farmers cannot vaccinate their animals preemptively and tell us the reasoning why it should not be allowed.”
Private Sector Shut Out as Vaccines Sit in Storage
Rossouw said the scale of the vaccination effort required private-sector participation.
Despite a million vaccines arriving two weeks prior and a further 1.5 million landing at OR Tambo Airport five days earlier, bureaucratic delays had kept the latter batch in storage and out of farmers’ hands.
With private logistics infrastructure already in place and companies willing to fund procurement themselves, he argued the solution was within reach.
“If we allow these private companies — with a perfect cold chain, with logistics — to get access to the vaccines, which they were willing to pay for, farmers can place their orders, and it can arrive on the farm within 24 hours.”
Government’s Trade Status Argument Dismissed
The government had defended centralised control by arguing it protected South Africa’s international trade status.
Rossouw rejected this, citing correspondence from the World Organisation for Animal Health confirming it did not prescribe who procured or administered vaccines.
He warned that losses, a dairy farm a day and 50,000 pigs slaughtered in three weeks, would hollow out the sector long before any trade recovery could begin.
“We are currently losing a dairy farm a day… in 10 years’ time, when the minister wants to apply for the status, we’re not going to have any farmers left.”
