{"id":412100,"date":"2026-01-14T10:35:11","date_gmt":"2026-01-14T10:35:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/412100\/"},"modified":"2026-01-14T10:35:11","modified_gmt":"2026-01-14T10:35:11","slug":"steenhusien-declares-war-on-foot-and-mouth-disease-ravaging-livestock","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/412100\/","title":{"rendered":"Steenhusien declares &#8216;war&#8217; on foot-and-mouth disease ravaging livestock"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Minister of Agriculture John Steenhuisen has declared war on foot-and-mouth disease that\u2019s ravaging livestock in feedlots and dairies in several provinces.<\/p>\n<p>He\u2019s told Parliament that steps are underway to improve the country\u2019s ability to produce its own vaccines after it lost the ability to do so two decades ago.<\/p>\n<p>Steenhuisen is expected to make a national announcement on Wednesday on the strategy for the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ewn.co.za\/2026\/01\/01\/over-12-million-cattle-to-be-vaccinated-against-foot-and-mouth-disease-this-year\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">mass vaccination of the national herd<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Responding to questions during the debate on the medium-term budget in the National Assembly on Tuesday, Steenhuisen said adjustments had been made to the Agriculture Department budget to deal with the scourge of foot-and-mouth disease.<\/p>\n<p>This includes partnering with the Agricultural Research Council to scale up vaccine production.<\/p>\n<p>READ: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ewn.co.za\/2026\/01\/10\/meat-prices-expected-to-stay-high-amid-foot-and-mouth-disease-outbreak#error=login_required&amp;state=becce424-0205-40d8-a916-df93b08e0b12\" data-anchor=\"#error=login_required&amp;state=becce424-0205-40d8-a916-df93b08e0b12\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Meat prices expected to stay high amid foot-and-mouth disease outbreak<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe do currently have vaccines, but they are obviously in short supply. We have orders in to have over a million vaccines delivered this month. We vaccinated over a million cattle in the last two months of last year and the intention is to wage war against foot and mouth by moving towards a vaccination-to-live strategy, which would see the vaccination of the entire national herd.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Steenhuisen said that he\u2019s confident in following the strategy of BRICS nations like Brazil.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cFor the first time ever, South Africa now has a clear pathway towards FMD-free status without vaccination. It\u2019s going to be a journey, but that journey has now begun.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Minister of Agriculture John Steenhuisen has declared war on foot-and-mouth disease that\u2019s ravaging livestock in feedlots and dairies&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":412101,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[64,63,99,164,115924,115925,115928,115927,115926,1347,44,3357,115931,115930,115929],"class_list":["post-412100","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-business","tag-economy","tag-ewn","tag-ewn-news","tag-ewn-south-africa","tag-eye-witness-news","tag-eyewitness-news","tag-latest-news","tag-news","tag-news-today","tag-prime-media-plus","tag-primedia-plus","tag-primedia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/412100","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=412100"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/412100\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/412101"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=412100"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=412100"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=412100"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}