Dear Editor
Earlier this week I attended the FMD Indaba opened by Minister Steenhuisen, where he reiterated the urgent need to build local vaccine manufacturing capacity while committing to empowering and restructuring both Onderstepoort Biological Products (OBP) and the Agricultural Research Council (ARC).
This was a first-of-its-kind indaba of over 400 key role-players in agriculture and animal health, assembled by Minister Steenhuisen. The DA supports the “whole-of-society” approach to strengthening biosecurity, where government creates an enabling environment for private sector participation.
The lack of available locally-manufactured agricultural vaccines remains a serious crisis for South Africa inherited from years of inaction under the previous ANC administration, where the capacity to manufacture vaccines was allowed to collapse at Onderstepoort and the ARC.
The result of this mismanagement over many years of ANC Ministers is that vaccine availability remains a critical concern.
Without this local vaccine production capacity, the Agriculture Department under Minister Steenhuisen did swiftly procure 900,000 vaccines from Botswana – and this is welcomed – but it does not create long-term certainty of vaccine availability for South Africa.
For this reason Minister John Steenhuisen’s drive to restore local vaccine production capacity in South Africa, is the right thing to do for South Africa’s long term agriculture security.
The ARC as the institution responsible for manufacturing Foot and Mouth Disease vaccines, must be capacitated and held accountable for delivering on this critical mandate. The DA will continue to monitor developments at both ARC and OBP to ensure that long-term solutions are prioritised over short-term imports.
The DA also warmly welcomes a new regionalised management structure of the current Foot and Mouth Disease (FMD) outbreak, put in place by Minister of Agriculture John Steenhuisen.
Under this new approach, Minister Steenhuisen has appointed two senior, specialised veterinarians to manage a regional containment and mitigation operation, against Foot and Mouth Disease. Regional management will result in faster responses, better local implementation and better integration with local agricultural communities.
Most importantly a regionalised management of Foot and Mouth Disease would prevent local outbreaks from halting national trade. South Africa cannot afford an outbreak in, for instance Limpopo, to affect the exports from a province a great distance away, for instance the Eastern Cape.
This is an excellent initiative, to further enhance South Africa’s fight against the Foot and Mouth Disease outbreak, and keep agricultural trade going.
We also welcome the allocation of funding for feedlots and abattoirs in protection zones. This will help prevent the movement of infected livestock into disease-free areas, curbing transmission while boosting local economies and creating jobs.
In this regard, Minister Steenhuisen has led from the front, engaging openly with stakeholders and delivering practical interventions to turn the tide against FMD.
Regards
Willie Aucamp MP
DA Spokesperson on Agriculture