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The Gauteng Department of Agriculture and Rural Development (GDARD) has finally admitted that only 540,000 animals were vaccinated against Foot and Mouth Disease (FMD) despite the department having received over 757 340 vaccine doses. That leaves over 200 000 of the FMD vaccines that have not been administered, which may hurt efforts at containing the outbreak.

While vaccinating 540,000 animals is significant, it remains unclear how many susceptible animals are yet to be vaccinated. To date, the department has failed to provide a credible estimate of the total susceptible herd vaccinated in Gauteng. Without that denominator, the public does not know whether the province is close to herd protection or still dangerously exposed.

The Democratic Alliance (DA) Gauteng will table further questions on this to determine exactly how many animals in the province needed to be vaccinated, what will happen to the remaining 200 000 vaccines that are unaccounted for, how many of these doses are still usable, and what the expiry date of the vaccinations is.

The DA Gauteng acknowledges the difficult work done by frontline veterinary officials, animal technicians and support teams in response to the FMD outbreak in Gauteng. However, Gauteng’s FMD response has been poorly managed, poorly communicated, and inadequately accounted for.

FMD is a controlled animal disease with devastating consequences for livestock, farmers, farmworkers, auctions, dairy production, exports, and food security. The Animal Diseases Act provides the legal framework for the control of animal diseases, including movement control and vaccine distribution. Gauteng remains responsible for key steps, including coordinating the rollout of vaccines, tracking vaccination, and provide clear progress community to farmers and public.

This is not a small technical issue. This goes to the heart of whether GDARD knows what is happening on the ground, particularly in communal and peri-urban areas where many animals move freely, ownership is not always clear, and biosecurity is difficult to enforce.

If the department does not know the total number of animals at risk, how can it claim to know whether the vaccination response is enough? Distribution and implementation did not move fast enough. That is a provincial failure.

In addition, despite several requests, the MEC of Agriculture has yet to provide a clear breakdown of how the R63 .4 million allocated to fight FMD has been spent. Gauteng’s farmers deserve a government that is transparent about the scale of the crisis, honest about its own weaknesses, and serious about fixing them.

Gauteng has capable private veterinarians, organised agriculture, auction houses, livestock associations, farmer networks and commercial producers who could have helped strengthen the response and who can assist GDARD with vaccinations and animal control.

The DA's strategy is clear: conduct a thorough audit of farms requiring FMD vaccinations and collaborate with the private sector to ensure every animal in need of vaccinations receives them. Farmers are critical to food security in the province, and if we do not work hand in hand with them, we put food security and every job in this industry at risk.

Issued by DA Gauteng Shadow MEC for Agriculture and Rural Development Bronwynn Engelbrecht