Court postpones farmers' FMD case, gives department deadline to finalise vaccination scheme

The Gauteng Division of the High Court has dismissed an urgent application by a number of groups calling for the unregulated procurement and administration of foot-and-mouth (FMD) vaccines in the face of the crisis around the disease.

Agriculture Minister John Steenhuisen has come in for criticism over his handling of the FMD outbreak, with farmers arguing that strict state-controlled vaccine rules are delaying our response, threatening livelihoods and the wider agricultural economy.

Tuesday's court order has effectively postponed the matter, giving the Department of Agriculture a set timeframe to finalise its vaccination drive.

The legal challenge is being led by the Southern African Agri Initiative (SAAI), alongside Free State Agriculture and Sakeliga.

Stephen Grootes interviews Francois Rossouw, CEO of SAAI, and gets a response from Minister Steenhuisen.

RELATED: Farmers take government to court as foot-and-mouth disease spreads across entire South Africa

Rossouw takes issue with the statement issued by the Ministry highlighting that the court did not grant the urgent relief sought by the applicants.

"There was no ruling with regards to 'urgent', in fact the court ruled against the Minister, with costs. They actually gave him a deadline to come back with a Section 10 application to show how he is going to remedy the situation... We went to court to establish what in the current regulations or current scheme there is that is preventing farmers from vaccinating and procuring their own vaccines."

In turn, Steenhuisen contradicts Rossouw's assertion that he as the Minister is the only impediment to achieving this at the moment.

The Minister reiterates that his actions are mandated by the regulations and the law applying to state control of diseases, particularly those requiring vaccines that are not regulated for use in South Africa to be managed by veterinarians registered to do so.

"We've already made it very clear that private veterinarians as well as private animal health technicians can assist in this and we've had hundreds of them registering to assist. The reality is that these vaccines are not registered for use in SA, which is why they have to go through a Section 21 process for their importation."

Referring to Rossouw's statement that farmers are already doing their own vaccinations for other diseases, he points out that this is the case because the remedies for those diseases are registered vaccines.

"The FMD vaccines are not regulated - they're imported in emergency situations like we did with COVID vaccines."

Steenhuisen also rebuts allegations that farmers need to be able to procure vaccines and vaccinate animals themselves to achieve national herd immunity as soon as possible.

He maintains that the Department is well on track to meet the vaccination target of 80% of the national herd by December.

In fact, says Steenhuisen, the vaccines are rolling out at an "incredibly fast" pace around the country, according to the Department's strategy that focuses on the priority areas where FMD is at its peak and where it is the most virulent.

"There have been millions of vaccines rolled out since the beginning of this year; we vaccinated two million in the last quarter of last year and as the vaccines start to arrive (from the three suppliers} we've got the SAHPRA approval for six million and are awaiting approval for even bigger orders."

Scroll up to the audio player to hear the full interviews with the Saai CEO and the Agriculture Minister