Concerns have been raised about the country’s biosecurity system after the outbreaks of several animal diseases in the country over the past two years.
Chief economist of the Agricultural Business Chamber of South Africa (Agbiz), Wandile Sihlobo, said the fact that the country has had so many outbreaks suggested that there were weaknesses in the biosecurity system.
The biosecurity system refers to measures to reduce the risk of infectious diseases being transmitted to crops, livestock and poultry.
Sihlobo who is also a member of the Presidential Economic Advisory Council (Peac), said outbreaks of foot-and-mouth disease in cattle, African swine fever in pigs and avian influenza in poultry had become frequent.
He acknowledged that biosecurity breaches were not unique to South Africa, and that the country has had to deal with the disease outbreaks almost simultaneously.
He said in 2022, six provinces reported foot-and-mouth disease out- breaks and the sheep industry was also affected. Towards the end of the same year, the pig industry experienced outbreaks of African swine fever while more recently, the focus had been on avian influenza. More than a hundred commercial poultry facilities were affected.
Sihlobo said these outbreaks had a notable impact on the country’s agricultural exports and growth prospects of the sector.
“Based on this history and the experiences of the agricultural sector, there is concern that South Africa’s biosecurity breaches signal serious capacity challenges in farm biosecurity measures and the country’s veterinary and related support services (mainly the laboratories) that control the movement of livestock and vaccine production,” he said.
SA Poultry Association CEO Izaak Breitenbach said with regard to avian influenza, there were always ways to improve biosecurity.
“It has however, to be noted that we have seen very different impacts of the H5 and H7 strains of influenza.
The H7 strain is much more virulent and contagious, causing significantly more outbreaks of the disease even when biosecurity was of an extremely high standard.”
Breitenbach said part of the biosecurity protocols was the Animal Diseases Act of 1984 that declares Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza (HPAI) as a notifiable disease, and in terms of the act a stamp out or culling policy is followed.
The act also requires producers that cull healthy but in-contact birds to be reimbursed for losses suffered.
“This has not happened leading to a slow rate of culling and in some cases no culling that kept (the)virus alive and the disease spreading,” he said.
He said the Department of Agriculture, Land Reform and Rural Development should compensate farmers for birds culled, and a restriction of movement of long living birds should be implemented with the first signs of an outbreak of the disease.
Gerhard Schutte, the chief executive of the Red Meat Producers Organisation (RPO), said there were major concerns with weaknesses with the biosecurity system.
Schutte said the Minister of Agriculture, Thoko Didiza’s task team released a report a few months ago detailing the problems and provided specific solutions.
“There is definitely a problem with capacity on the government’s side not only in terms of people, state vets, but also in terms of equipment etc,” he said.
He said South Africa needed good biosecurity and the 2030 vision was in place to grow exports from 5% to 20% of local beef production, as well as 1% of sheep exports to 6%.
“The only way to do it is to jack up our biosecurity. We lost our foot and mouth disease free status but since then we are back in 26 countries on bilateral agreements, and those agreements are very dependent on the perception of how South Africa deals with biosecurity,” said Schutte.
Department spokesperson Reggie Ngcobo said the minister had assembled a Biosecurity Task Team which looked at areas that needed improvement in animal health.
“Issues such as increased spending on personnel, improvement in vaccine manufacturing and even fencing in the high risk areas bordering game reserves, are some of the aspects that were raised that we are addressing,” he said.
Ngcobo said the livestock and poultry sub-sectors made up about half of “our agricultural value, and we want to ensure the sector grows and limit the spread and impact of diseases in future.”
“We will implement the Biosecurity Task Team recommendations, along with the Master Plan suggestions,” he added.
The Mercury