{"id":847295,"date":"2026-01-07T13:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-01-07T11:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=847295"},"modified":"2026-01-08T10:49:01","modified_gmt":"2026-01-08T08:49:01","slug":"biggest-livestock-farming-disaster-south-africa-has-ever-experienced","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/government\/847295\/biggest-livestock-farming-disaster-south-africa-has-ever-experienced\/","title":{"rendered":"Biggest livestock farming disaster South Africa has ever experienced"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Saai and Agri All Africa Chairman Theo de Jager says the current foot-and-mouth outbreak is the worst livestock farming disaster in South African history.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

De Jager is a South African agricultural leader, farmer, and policy advocate, best known for his role in organised agriculture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Apart from his role as chairman at the Southern African Agri Initiative (Saai) and Agri All Africa, he was also the former President of the World Farmers Organisation (WFO).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He shared statistics to show the rapid increase in the foot-and-mouth disease across South Africa.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The country is experiencing one of the worst outbreaks in decades. It started in April 2025 in KwaZulu-Natal. Since then, it has spread country-wide.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The worst-affected provinces are KwaZulu-Natal, the Free State, Mpumalanga, Gauteng, and the North West.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Agriculture Minister John Steenhuisen has announced plans to vaccinate all the cattle in South Africa from Foot and Mouth Disease (FMD) starting in February 2026.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In September 2025, Steenhuisen rejected claims from the Red Meat Producers Organisation that FMD was \u201cout of control.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A month later, experts sounded the alarm, calling the outbreak one of the most severe in South Africa\u2019s history. This triggered fears of export bans and soaring meat prices.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Despite vaccinating 931,200 animals with vaccines purchased from Botswana for R72 million, the spread of the disease has not been contained.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In November 2025, Steenhuisen admitted there were serious problems. \u201cWe must be honest with the public and with our farming sector. This is a battle we are currently not winning,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On 6 January 2026, De Jager described the current situation as the worst livestock farming disaster in South African history.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThere is very little that farmers can legally do for themselves to combat a state-controlled disease,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cNot a single responsible official in the Department of Agriculture has yet been held accountable.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He shared a chart which illustrates the scale of the foot-and-mouth disease outbreak and why urgent action is needed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It shows the number of open cases of type 2 serotype of the foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) virus in the Southern African Territories (SAT), as reported by the World Organisation for Animal Health (WOAH).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Saai and Agri All Africa Chairman Theo de Jager says the current foot-and-mouth outbreak is the worst livestock farming disaster in South African history.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":847303,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[24453,22736,20147,24452,22981,24454],"class_list":["post-847295","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-government","tag-agri-all-africa","tag-foot-and-mouth-disease-fmd","tag-john-steenhuisen","tag-southern-african-agri-initiative-saai","tag-theo-de-jager","tag-world-farmers-organisation-wfo"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/847295","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=847295"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/847295\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":847413,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/847295\/revisions\/847413"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/847303"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=847295"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=847295"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=847295"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}