Agriculture author and expert Wandile Sihlobo tells Peter Bruce in this edition of Podcasts from the Edge that agriculture minister John Steenhuisen has no option but to import foot-and-mouth disease vaccines through a centralised operation, despite the threats from many farmers to challenge him in court for the right to do the vaccinations themselves.
“We can’t now produce any vaccines,” he says, but “if you want to vaccinate about 12-million head of cattle and you’re not going to do it once — you will vaccinate and then you need to boost and perhaps vaccinate two more times so that you are fully out of this, as Argentina and the others have done before — then you need to have that supply in place. The problem Africa has is that we don’t have the supply in place … and then it has to be imported by the state. And in fact, that’s what the regulations from the World Organisation for Animal Health say. So when Steenhuisen says it’s only the government that will import, he’s really following the rules.”
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