Agricultural industry representatives yesterday welcomed the launch of the National Biosecurity Hub, saying it would bolster the financial security of the sector.
The launch of the Hub comes hot on the heels of a recent devastating outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease in South Africa.
The Department of Science and Innovation and the Minister of Agriculture, Land Reform and Rural Development Minister Thoko Didiza yesterday launched the National Biosecurity Hub in collaboration with the University of Pretoria (UP).
The Hub will consolidate and direct activities to support animal health, plant health and food safety initiatives.
Didiza said the role of the Biosecurity Hub in consolidating research on known and emerging biosecurity threats, human capital development, and the development of a Biosecurity Information Hub was key.
“As we are consolidating our biosecurity efforts domestically, it also positions South Africa to play a leading role in the management of agricultural pests and diseases at a sub-regional and regional level. This is particularly important as pest and disease have no respect for geographical borders,” she said.
Didiza added that the African Continental Free Trade Area had come into force with the intention of increasing intra-African trade through deeper levels of trade liberalisation and enhanced regulatory harmonisation and co-ordination,
Thus extending biosecurity efforts beyond the border of South Africa was particularly important.
“We hope that this initiative will serve as a model for other countries and, as trade is being integrated, we can also integrate efforts through biosecurity networks across the African Region,” Didiza said.
Dr Marinda Visser, a director of Strategic Projects and Partnerships in Agriculture at Innovation Africa at the UP said yesterday if biosecurity measures in South Africa were strengthened, the agricultural sector would financially benefit.
Bolstering biosecurity would boost the economic prosperity for the farmers and the industry, Visser said.
Visser said if there was an issue with animal health in the livestock and poultry industry, the grain industry suffered because it formed the basis of the feedstock industry that fed the animals and the chickens.
“If there is a problem on the animal health side there are consequences in terms of the off-takers like crops and grains. It is important that we have the basics right,” Visser said.
The Agricultural Research Council (ARC) said the sector needed to embrace the one health approach, which was a collaborative multidisciplinary approach to deal with diseases both in plants, animals and humans and the environment they operated in at the different scales of local level, regional as well as the global level.
“That is perhaps what is going to assist us in order to respond to some of the challenges that we have. Biosecurity is not a one-party issue that can be resolved in one corner,” it said.
Gerhard Schutte, the CEO of the national Red Meat Producers' Organisation (RPO), said South Africa could grow the red meat industry from 4% of production to 20%.
“A lot of the livestock industries that are balance of payment spinners are wool, mohair, wildlife, ostriches, equine and important genetics,” he said, also highlighting the importance of the local poultry and pork sector .
“These industries need technology and innovation and animal public health. We need a totally new game plan. That is why we are excited about the launch of the Biosecurity Hub. With regard to exports we need to get our trading partners to be satisfied but always remember that 96% and 99% of beef and sheep meat is consumed locally. We need to put our consumers at rest,” he said.
He added that the country must not only deal with diseases that had a trading impact, but also dealt with erosion diseases.
“We need vaccines not only from OBP (Onderstepoort Biological Products), but the free market. We need registrations from Act 36, we need capacity in terms of the free market when it comes to labs. That is crucial at this stage. We need a traceability system and international accreditation. To get there it was very simple with a team effort between government and industry… The stakes are too high not to get this one right,” Schutte said.
The South African Poultry Association’s Izaak Breitenbach said that biosecurity for the industry was enormously important to get right.
Fhumulani Ratshitanga, the CEO of Fruit South Africa (Fruit SA), said that some measures imposed by other trading partners/countries were more of a financial threat that they posed some agricultural sub-sectors because of the loss of market access opportunities.
“Nonetheless, SPS (Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures) measures also have an effect on the sustainability of the industry, the cost involved with compliance and the issues to do with the loss of chemicals that can be used to control some of these diseases and pests,” Ratshitanga said.
Ratshitanga said the inability to use certain chemicals was due to pressures coming from the EU, in particular around MRLs (maximum residue limit).
“That is the view we have on SPS measures. Some of them are scientifically justifiable, there is no contestation around that. There are those that certain countries or trading partners opt as protectionist measures to protect their own industries and also make our own industries less competitive.”
Ratshitanga said the biosecurity work did not fall on only one player and required collaboration.
Grain-SA chief executive Dr Pieter Taljaard said that often times, in plant production and in grains and oilseed, they felt neglected with regards to biosecurity because it was typically felt that biosecurity was an animal problem.
“There are other challenges we need to focus on to ensure that we are safe. The key focus is really to make sure that we will in time. We need to envision this coming. We need this futuristic view because it is actually perfect in time because even the season where we came out and the season we came in, we see that farmers are going to produce more soybeans and all of a sudden we need this ‘exhaust valve’ where we can export some of the products if we have too much and earn this vital foreign currency,” Taljaard said.
He said that another point which was crucial when looking at staples like maize lethal necrosis and wheat blast was to ensure there were early detections in place to be able to react once these were a challenge.
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