SA to import vaccines to tackle foot-and-mouth disease

South Africa will import vaccines from Argentina, Turkey and neighbouring Botswana in a bid to contain an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease that has severely impacted red meat and dairy producers.

It has been difficult to quantify the damage caused by the virus, which maims cattle rather than killing them outright, “but the industry has been hit really hard,” Agricultural Minister John Steenhuisen told reporters in Cape Town on Wednesday. “There is a stigma attached to reporting an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease by farmers due to the requirements to place the farm under quarantine.”

South Africa lost its status of being free of the disease in 2019 because the government neglected the Agriculture Research Center, a domestic producer of vaccines, and it wasn’t able to produce enough shots. The center is now gearing up to produce as many as 12,000 foot-and-mouth vaccine doses by mid-February, while those that are being imported will be distributed as soon as regulatory approval is obtained.

The Department of Agriculture has budgeted R1.8 billion ($110 million) in the financial year through April 2026 to buy the vaccines, according to Mooketa Ramasodi, its director-general. “We are also approaching National Treasury for the funding of additional projects to fight the disease,” he said.

Russel Luck, the chief executive officer of online livestock trading platform swiftVEE, said the outbreak of foot-and mouth disease had resulted in the loss of domestic and international trading opportunities worth an estimated 5 billion rand over the past year.

© 2026 Bloomberg

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