OWN CORRESPONDENT, Pietermaritzburg | Friday
SOUTH Africa is set to lose some of its foreign markets for agricultural products with the declaration of the entire KwaZulu-Natal province as a foot-and-mouth restricted area after the disease spread beyond the existing quarantine zone into the Valley of a Thousand Hills.
The province is likely to face a two-year ban on the export of all cloven-hoofed animals and products, and at least 1.35 million animals will be vaccinated.
Eighteen countries have already slapped full or partial bans on cloven-hoofed animal products from South Africa since the highly-infectious virus killed 70 pigs on a farm in Camperdown in September.
State veterinarians last week decided to cull all remaining 9000 animals in the Camperdown quarantine zone and news of the new infections has been met with disappointment by already dejected farmers.
“There seems to be no end to this nightmare,” one said.
Since the outbreak of the disease, some 7000 animals have been culled, including protected Oribe buck, and more than 300 farmers have been compensated.
The latest outbreak was detected when cattle were tested at KwaMagugwane inside the monitoring area with a radius of 30 km.
The cattle had not yet presented foot-and-mouth disease symptoms. The disease is highly contagious – particularly when blisters inside the animals’ mouths burst and sores develop on their feet.
The control area, currently including 16 districts between Durban and Pietermaritzburg, will be extended on a large scale. Contaminated herds will be destroyed while other cloven hoof animals will be vaccinated and branded to identify them.
Four possible actions to the latest outbreak had been considered, said provincial Agriculture MEC Narend Singh. The first was to destroy cloven hoof animals over a huge area, which was not feasible. Other possibilities were a combination of vaccination and destroying animals, vaccination only, or letting the disease take its course.
Animal products from KwaZulu-Natal will still be consumed locally since the disease poses no danger to humans, Singh said.