Farmers and state clash over response to cattle disease

The Agricultural Research Council’s Onderstepoort Veterinary Research Campus (known as ARC-OVR) is responsible for monitoring the foot and mouth disease epidemic. Photos: Ihsaan Haffejee

• South Africa’s cattle farms are in the grip of a foot and mouth disease (FMD) epidemic.
• In January, the Agricultural Research Council (ARC) sent FMD samples to the UK’s Pirbright Institute, but now says there is no need for Pirbright to duplicate routine testing that the ARC already does.
• Farmers fear a lack of independent data analysis could hamper efforts to match vaccines, produced by large manufacturers in Argentina and Turkey, to changing strains of the virus. They are concerned that the ARC has a conflict of interests because it also manufactures FMD vaccines, albeit not enough to meet South Africa’s needs.
• The ARC says the strains identified in January remain in circulation and that no significant genetic changes have been detected (implying vaccines remain as effective against them). But farmers point out that the ARC has not published its data and so its claims cannot be verified.

John Steenhuisen, when he was Minister of Agriculture, announced that South Africa had resumed sending samples from animals infected with foot and mouth disease (FMD) to the Pirbright Institute in the UK.

This was important because Pirbright, the world reference laboratory for FMD, analyses these samples and publishes the results. It tests the efficacy of FMD vaccines against the currently circulating strains, a process known as vaccine matching, so that manufacturers can update their vaccines to be more effective.

The Agricultural Research Council (ARC) veterinary research campus in Onderstepoort did indeed send 11 samples to Pirbright in January, the first time it had done so since 2011, despite the current FMD epidemic starting in 2019 or 2020. Pirbright analysed these samples and published the findings in its first quarterly report of 2026.

Pirbright published its second quarterly report for the year last week and no new samples from South Africa are described in it. We sent questions to the ARC who effectively confirmed that no further samples have been sent to Pirbright since January.

Farmers who have been battling FMD argue this is not good enough.

Andrew Morphew, a dairy farmer in the KZN Midlands and spokesperson for FMD Response SA, a coalition of farmers, is worried the ARC has a conflict of interests because it is trying to be a vaccine producer but also has the responsibility of collecting data that FMD vaccine manufacturers need.

“It’s a major concern for all of us,” said Friedl von Maltitz, a cattle farmer in Ficksburg, Free State. He explained that the ARC won’t have the capacity to produce enough FMD vaccines for the country for at least a couple of years.

South Africa has 12 to 14-million cattle. The country is in the worst FMD epidemic in its history. Vaccines are effective, but not perfectly so. The more animals that are vaccinated, the less virus there will be in circulation, and the slower the disease will spread.

Morphew and many other farmers, as well as vets and scientists we have spoken to, argue that the most effective way to get on top of the epidemic is to vaccinate as many cattle as possible over a 30 to 60-day period, twice a year for the foreseeable future. This would optimally reduce the amount of virus in circulation. But to do that, 25-million vaccine doses will be needed annually.

(There’s also a complication of giving a booster dose, after about a month, to first-time vaccinated animals. Another complication, one vet told GroundUp, is that we should consider vaccinating all cloven-hoofed farm animals, including sheep, goats and pigs. There are over 20-million sheep in the country, so that would be a huge increase in the number of vaccines needed.)

The vaccines are mainly being imported from two companies, Biogénesis Bagó in Argentina and Dollvet in Turkey. Between them they can easily produce enough doses for South Africa’s cattle. There has been progress. Minister Willie Aucamp, Steenhuisen’s replacement, said earlier this month that 23-million vaccines have been imported. Almost the entire dairy herd (over one-million cows) of the country has been vaccinated at least once this year.

While this vaccination system cannot be implemented perfectly, the closer to it the more the disease can be brought under control.

A sign warning of foot and mouth disease preventative measures at the University of Pretoria Hillcrest Campus where dairy cows are kept as part of the Hatfield Experimental Farm of the University of Pretoria.

This year, after more than two decades, the ARC also started producing vaccines. While this may seem a welcome development, it’s at the root of Maltitz and Morphew’s concerns. Even in the most optimistic forecasts, the ARC cannot produce nearly enough vaccines for the country. It is a far smaller producer than Biogénesis and Dollvet. The vaccines from these overseas companies must therefore be regularly matched against – and adapted for – the strains of FMD circulating in South Africa for them to be most effective.

A key role of the ARC is to monitor FMD. That means collecting and analysing samples from infected animals, and assessing the effectiveness of vaccines. But because it is a vaccine manufacturer, farmers worry that the ARC has an incentive not to share information with other vaccine producers, against whom it is competing: a conflict of interests. This would be less of a concern if the ARC provided Pirbright regularly with samples.

Scepticism is exacerbated by the ARC having been a producer of FMD vaccines until 2005, and then losing that capacity. It does not have a proven track record, and it’s unclear why a publicly funded institution is performing a function usually carried out by the private sector.

GroundUp asked the ARC why it hasn’t sent samples to Pirbright since January. The organisation responded that its Onderstepoort facility is a recognised World Organisation for Animal Health (WOAH) reference laboratory, and that its technical competence is comparable to Pirbright. The ARC also said it does vaccine matching, and had in fact done so in January for vaccines imported from Turkey.

“[ARC] routinely conducts phylogenetic surveillance of circulating FMD field strains … and maintains a … collection of Southern African FMD viruses. The decision to submit samples to another reference laboratory is therefore informed by the surveillance and diagnostic value of doing so rather than by a requirement to duplicate testing routinely,” the ARC told us.

“Current evidence confirms that the strains previously submitted to [Pirbright] remain in circulation,” ARC stated. It said that “no significant antigenic or genetic drift” has been detected, meaning the virus hasn’t changed much since it was sent to Pirbright. This implies that vaccines that are effective against the strains sent in January don’t need to be updated.

But Morphew pointed out, correctly, that Pirbright’s first quarter report had indicated early evidence of antigenic diversity. (See page 1 of the report.)

ARC denied it had a conflict of interests. It said there are international precedents for institutions that act as reference laboratories and vaccine producers and gave the Botswana Vaccine Institute as an example. (Morphew says the other examples are China and Russia.)

“A reference laboratory that also has an affiliated vaccine production capability is an advantage, not a handicap nor automatic conflict,” ARC told us. “South Africa currently has a strategic need to restore and strengthen domestic FMD vaccine capability.”

But Maltitz is unconvinced. “Where are the ARC’s quarterly results of samples they’ve collected? Why are those not published?” Maltitz asks.

Nobody outside the ARC can check whether new strains of the virus are being seen, because the data that would show it is not published, says Morphew. “There is no independent way of knowing whether the ARC is right.”

In contrast, Pirbright publishes its findings quarterly. One can read detailed information about the 11 South African samples it received in its January to March 2026 report. Its quarterly reports, going back several years, are available on its website. It also publishes vaccine matching reports.

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