Farmer’s Weekly (FW) spoke to Andrew Morphew (AM), a KwaZulu-Natal dairy farmer and spokesperson for FMD Response SA, who believes vaccination is only part of the solution. He says South Africa’s next challenge is to prove, through surveillance and diagnostics, that it is making measurable progress towards regaining its FMD-free status.
FW: Government recently announced changes allowing the private sector to import, distribute, and administer FMD vaccines. Do you consider this to be a turning point?
AM: Yes, because government and farmers ultimately want the same outcome: to bring FMD under control and restore South Africa’s FMD-free status so export markets can reopen.
For months, that shared objective became overshadowed by disagreements over who was allowed to vaccinate. Those issues culminated in legal action by the Southern African Agricultural Initiative, Free State Agriculture, and Sakeliga against the Department of Agriculture.
On 9 July, the parties reached a settlement agreement with the newly appointed Minister of Agriculture Willie Aucamp, which fundamentally changed the approach to South Africa’s disease control.
The agreement allows the private sector to import and distribute lawfully approved FMD vaccines, enables farmers to vaccinate under the prescribed regulatory framework, and introduces new control measures under Section 9 [of the Animal Diseases Act] that create practical pathways for moving products, maintaining milk collection, and lifting quarantine once the required conditions have been met.
The agreement effectively shifts South Africa from a government-led vaccination programme to a partnership between the state and the private sector, while maintaining government oversight of disease control and surveillance.
These are significant gains. They broaden participation in disease control and reduce the practical and financial consequences farmers often face when reporting an outbreak, such as prolonged quarantine, movement restrictions, and disruption to normal farming operations.
FW: Does that mean South Africa is now on track to regain its FMD-free status?
AM: It’s an important first step, but it’s only the first half of the job. The next challenge is proving that the strategy is working.
Government has said it is following a progressive pathway back to FMD-free status. That pathway is not something you simply announce; evidence must be given for every stage before the country can move on to the next one.
FW: What does that pathway look like?
AM: There are five essential steps.
First, we have to establish exactly where the virus is circulating, where transmission has stopped, and where it is still spreading.
Second, vaccination and movement controls must reduce transmission.
Third, surveillance has to demonstrate that a defined area is free of the virus before it can be protected from reintroduction.
Fourth, South Africa must submit that evidence to the World Organisation for Animal Health (WOAH) to obtain official recognition of that disease-free zone.
Finally, the clean zone can gradually be expanded until national freedom is restored.
Each one of these steps depends on proving that the previous one has been achieved.
FW: Government regularly reports the number of vaccine doses administered. Why do you consider that insufficient to measure progress?
AM: Vaccine numbers show activity, but they don’t necessarily demonstrate progress.
Progress is measured by results, not by how many doses have been injected.
The key question is whether vaccination has actually reduced virus transmission and created sufficient immunity across the livestock population.
FW: Why do you argue that South Africa has lost ground during this outbreak?
AM: The vaccine rollout was slow and uneven. Protection generally lasts around six months, but doses were administered over many months in separate provincial campaigns. That means South Africa never created a single national wall of immunity.
Successful vaccination programmes are normally completed within six to eight weeks. Instead, our rollout became a prolonged process while the geographical footprint of the disease continued to expand.
Earlier this year, the Western and Northern Cape were still regarded as protection areas for exports. Today, there is no outbreak-free province left to build from.
A disease-free zone can still be created, but it now has to be carved out of areas where FMD has already occurred. That is much more difficult and depends entirely on reliable surveillance and enforceable movement controls.
FW: You say surveillance has become critical. Why?
AM: Because South Africa has not yet publicly established a reliable national baseline showing where the virus is circulating.
Importantly, this is not simply criticism from the private sector. Government’s own technical task team has documented delayed serotyping, diagnostic backlogs, and provinces waiting months for confirmation of circulating strains.
The task team’s minutes identify delayed diagnostics as a bigger operational bottleneck than vaccine supply itself. One of the reasons is that nearly every FMD sample in South Africa is sent to a single facility: the Agricultural Research Council’s Transboundary Animal Diseases laboratory at Onderstepoort. It is an excellent WOAH reference laboratory, but it is also being asked to carry the burden of a national epidemic on its own.
Imagine routing every legal matter in the country through the Constitutional Court. Every murder trial, every eviction, and every traffic fine would all end up in the same court. You wouldn’t get better justice; you’d simply create an ever-growing queue. That is effectively what South Africa has done with FMD diagnostics.
Without timely diagnostics, we cannot accurately monitor the outbreak, determine where different virus strains are circulating, or measure whether vaccination is reducing transmission. Until that bottleneck is addressed, surveillance will remain the limiting factor in South Africa’s recovery.
FW: What information should surveillance provide?
AM: It needs to answer three fundamental questions:
Which virus strains are circulating, and where?
Have enough animals developed immunity at the same time to interrupt transmission?
Is virus circulation increasing or decreasing?
Vaccination changes the epidemic, but surveillance tells us whether it has changed enough to move South Africa closer to FMD-free status.
FW: What would you like government to publish?
AM: Government should publish a simple, regularly updated public scorecard showing five key indicators.
The first is vaccination coverage within clearly defined campaign windows of roughly eight weeks.
The second is immunity, based on representative testing showing how many animals are protected simultaneously.
The third is virus circulation, indicating where the disease persists and whether it is increasing or declining.
The fourth is measuring the impact of vaccination by recording outbreaks on vaccinated farms, together with vaccination history, vaccine type, and timing.
The fifth is laboratory turnaround times and the volume of diagnostic backlogs.
These indicators would allow farmers, veterinarians, scientists, and trading partners to judge whether vaccination is actually reducing transmission and whether the surveillance system is detecting those changes quickly enough.
At present, the publicly available information doesn’t allow for such assessment.
FW: What role should the private sector play from here?
AM: The responsibilities are now quite clear. Farmers and private veterinarians can vaccinate livestock. Private veterinarians can also collect samples. Accredited public, university, and private laboratories should all contribute diagnostic testing. Industry can assist with logistics, record-keeping, and data capture.
Government’s responsibility is to establish national standards, consolidate the evidence, define official disease-control zones, and provide the proof that the WOAH and trading partners require.
Government doesn’t necessarily have to own every laboratory, but it must ensure sufficient accredited diagnostic capacity exists, and that the information it relies on is credible.
FW: Where should government prioritise spending?
AM: Vaccine supply is no longer the only limiting factor, because vaccines can now be imported. The real constraint is surveillance, diagnostics, and post-vaccination monitoring.
Therefore, government faces a budget decision. It can continue investing heavily in domestic vaccine manufacturing capacity, even though vaccines are already available internationally, or it can strengthen the surveillance and diagnostic systems without which South Africa cannot demonstrate progress.
My view is straightforward: buy the vaccines the country needs, but invest in the surveillance infrastructure the country cannot do without.
FW: What is your overall message to government and the livestock industry?
AM: Government deserves credit for opening up vaccination to the private sector and making outbreak control more practical. That was the right decision. But the disease has spread to every province, making the next phase considerably more challenging.
South Africa can still get ahead of this outbreak. We can vaccinate rapidly enough, build lasting immunity, establish defensible disease-free areas, and gradually eliminate the virus.
However, none of that will restore South Africa’s recognised FMD-free status unless we can prove, with credible scientific evidence, that the strategy is working.
Ultimately, recognised freedom from the disease will be earned through evidence, not effort.
