SA's red meat safe to eat in the thick of food-and-mouth disease, says Agriculture Minister

CAPE TOWN - As the Department of Agriculture prepares for the mass vaccination of cattle to contain an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease, Minister John Steenhuisen has moved to assure consumers the country’s red meat is safe to eat. 

The outbreaks in Gauteng, KwaZulu-Natal and Mpumalanga have put the brakes on exports to China. 

Addressing the red meat abattoir association in Somerset West on Thursday, Steenhuisen said plans are afoot to place restrictions on auctions in the affected areas until the situation is brought under control. 

With South Africa currently unable to produce its own, the Department of Agriculture hopes vaccines will arrive from Botswana later this month to immunise 900,000 livestock for R42 million.

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Steenhuisen says the vaccinations will start in the disease management areas and the feedlots in Gauteng, which are already feeling the economic pinch. 

But he’s also going after farmers who behave irresponsibly. 

“The reality is if you have farmers who are conducting auctions in disease-management areas, who are being reckless with the way in which these auctions are being conducted, and then sending out from those auctions animals that are not properly screened or traced, or their origin being determined, and sending them out to other provinces, you do economic damage not only to your own business.”

Steenhuisen says he will be gazetting stricter regulations governing auctions and the movement of animals in the coming days.

“Anyone who breaks those laws, will face prosecution and potential civil recovery from others who have been economically harmed by their selfishness or recklessness.”

He added that the government would ramp up enforcement so that the entire value chain takes responsibility for biosecurity.