"When we stopped vaccine production, the facilities infrastructure was old & we struggled with quality control" - Department of Agriculture on decision to import over 90 000 doses of livestock vaccines from Botswana

The departmement of Agriculture says over 900-thousand doses of vaccines have been ordered to help fight the spread of the Foot-and-Mouth disease outbreak. This follows alarms raised by the Southern African Agri Initiative about the growing number of farmers struggling financially due to their inability to seel livestock. This stems from an FMD outbreak that began in KwaZulu-Natal in December 2024 which has since been reported in both Gauteng and Mpumalnga. Cattle farmers are now calling on government to take immediate action in order to avoid a national food crisis in the country. Yesterday, we spoke to the CEO of the Southern African Agri Initiative, Francious Rossouw. Sakina Kamwendo spoke to Director of Animal Health at the Department of Agriculture, Dr Mpho Maja