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The DA has received a petition with signatures from more than 6000 horse owners and breeders who expressed concerns about the shortage of African Horse Sickness vaccines and in some instances delayed delivery of vaccines.

When the Minister of Agriculture, Thoko Didiza, was asked about the vaccines through written parliamentary questions, she replied reassuringly that vaccines are available at the Onderstepoort Biological Products (OBP) facility. Yet, horse breeders and owners claim that every time they engage OBP for African Horse Sickness (AHS) vaccines, they are told there is no vaccines. If the Minister is right and there are sufficient vaccines at the facility, why are they not being supplied to horse breeders?

The DA sent another set of questions to the Minister, relating to this matter, which have not been answered at all.  The fact that the Ministers does not answer questions lets us to believe something is amiss. This lack of clarity weakens Parliament’s oversight role.

There have been several cases of AHS in various areas his year. The AHS outbreaks this season are very typical but are widespread. Veterinarians have confirmed AHS cases involving 8 of the 9 AHSV types so far.

The concern being raised by the industry and experts is the unusually high number of circulating types so early in the season. The peak of the AHS season is only in the latter part of April and into May. With our recent rains, things will get much worse. This, coupled with a lack of adequate vaccine availability before the season will have a serious impact.

Furthermore, in response to the Portfolio Committee relating to vaccine sales, OBP stated that there were lower sales and therefore lower income and lower expenses. The reasons for the lower sales could be attributed to the lack of a final product to sell due to production issues.

We have been reliably informed that OBP has had to destroy a lot of non-conformant product prior to packaging and delivery.

The DA will thus conduct an oversight visit to OBP in order to understand the issues that the institution is grappling with.

We will also submit a PAIA application in order to get the full version of events. These are going to help the DA in suggesting how the institution can be saved from the current administration. The commercial, emerging, and subsistence farmers rely heavily on this institution for animal health. There also are certain animal vaccines which are critical but which have very little commercial value. As these are of national, and international, importance these have to be provided for by the public sector. The current state of OBP makes this requirement very difficult to achieve.

The DA calls on the Minister to urgently intervene at OBP to address the problems there. We further call on the Minister to release the Inter-Ministerial Task report and put into action plans that that dealt with the issue of biosecurity and animal diseases in the country.

Issued by DA Constituency Head for Mogale City, Janho Engelbrecht MPL