However, this crisis was not sudden—it has been years in the making. Government officials and industry leaders were repeatedly warned that poor decision-making, inadequate enforcement, and lack of institutional coordination would eventually culminate in a major disaster. These warnings went unheeded. The question now is: who is really to blame here?
Is it the corruption and malfeasance at the state-owned entity, “Onderstepoort Biological Products”, or is it perhaps the lack of maintenance and support for the FMD vaccine production facility at the ARC Veterinary Research Institute at Onderstepoort (ARC-OVR)?
Is it perhaps the officials in the Department of Agriculture and the poor decision-making there, or were they compromised by the terrible state of veterinary service delivery in the key provinces of Mpumalanga, Limpopo, North West, and KwaZulu-Natal?
What about the role of the government procurement rules, the Public Finance Management Act (PFMA) and the lack of support by National Treasury and the Department of Public Works, not maintaining the “red line fences”, as well as border fences?
Do not forget the international and national standards of the WOAH (World Organisation of Animal Health), guiding the manufacturing of vaccines, combined with a lack of relevant experts to drive vaccine manufacturing.
And finally, are the farmers responsible for the illegal movement of animals also to blame?
It is probably the combination of all of the above. In essence, it boils down to three main factors:
Persistent institutional failures, including fragmented governance, weak coordination between national and provincial authorities;
Systemic challenges in vaccine production, procurement, and distribution (e.g., cold-chain infrastructure failures and ageing equipment);
Lack of movement control of animals, disease surveillance and reporting and illegal movement of animals.
To illustrate this argument, we have developed a timeline of FMD outbreaks in South Africa, as well as the timeline of institutional collapse of the veterinary system in South Africa. International standards and regulations, as well as the fact that FMD is a controlled disease, assume a competent state and a well-functioning veterinary service system.
A brief history of foot-and-mouth disease in SA
Infogram
Why have we seen increased FMD outbreaks?
There are many reasons for the increased number of FMD outbreaks. In drawing from the Ministerial Task Team Report of 2022 and various research papers, it boils down to the following:
Endemic wildlife reservoirs (African buffalo).
Increased and uncontrolled informal livestock movement.
Poor and insufficient disease surveillance and reporting.
Inability to timely predict, assess and act on causative risk factors responsible for disease occurrence and spread.
Ruralisation of the urban environment – e.g. people moving to and settling on the outskirts of larger towns and cities with their animals.
Food insecurity – illegal slaughtering and movement of infected animals as cheap sources of food.
Weak enforcement capacity.
Under-resourced provincial veterinary services.
Climate stress and changing land use.
Floods of 2000 severely damaged the KNP fence.
An increase in elephant populations that damage the fences.
Reaction time to remove stray buffalo has increased.
Repair of fences in the FMD zones is not always up to requirements.
Low Staff morale in various organisations in the veterinary system.
Political instability.
Onderstepoort: an important cog in the wheel of animal biosecurity
There are various institutional role players in the South African veterinary system. In terms of regulatory and administrative aspects, the National Department of Agriculture (and specifically the Director: Animal Health) and the various provincial departments play an important role.
The three institutions based at Onderstepoort are central to our veterinary system and a name synonymous with the South African veterinary system.
The Onderstepoort Veterinary Research Institute was established in 1908 and today forms part of the network of research institutes of the Agricultural Research Council (ARC).
The Faculty of Veterinary Science at the University of Pretoria was established at Onderstepoort in 1920 by Sir Arnold Theiler following his pioneering work in creating veterinary vaccines.
In 1968, the Veterinary Research Institute established a dedicated vaccine facility. This facility, known as “Onderstepoort Biological Products” (OBP), separated from the ARC-OVR in 1992 and eventually became incorporated as a State-Owned Commercial Entity under the Department of Agriculture through the Onderstepoort Biological Products Incorporation Act (Act no. 10 of 1999). OBP achieved ISO 9001 certification in 2007.
The Faculty of Veterinary Science trains veterinarians and scientists. The ARC-OVR implements scientific work on vaccine development and disease diagnostics, among other things. It always had the mandate to manufacture FMD vaccines, while OBP was tasked with the commercial distribution of the vaccine. OBP is furthermore responsible for the manufacturing of a long list of vaccines for livestock protection against viral, bacterial and protozoal diseases such as Bluetongue, African Horse Sickness, Lumpy Skin Disease, 3-day stiff sickness, Brucellosis, Rift Valley Fever, among others. The production and availability of some of these vaccines have become a major challenge recently.
Why SA lost its foot-and-mouth disease vaccine capacity
FMD vaccines are a classic public good: expensive to produce, strategically vital, but not highly profitable.
Historically, the ARC-OVR produced FMD vaccines, with OBP managing distribution. Despite prior capacity to produce up to 90 million doses annually, ARC-OVR is currently unable to supply meaningful volumes due to ageing infrastructure, equipment failures, loss of skilled staff, and inadequate maintenance.
These internal constraints, compounded by administrative and regulatory procurement delays, have resulted in chronic vaccine shortages. In response, South Africa has become increasingly reliant on imports, and illicit vaccine trade has emerged, undermining biosecurity and regulatory control.
For decades, South Africa was able to produce its own foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) vaccines. The Foot-and-Mouth Disease Institute, as it was then called, was officially inaugurated in 1980 with Dr Pini as the first director, followed in later years by eminent scientists such as Drs Gavin Thomson, Wilna Vosloo and Baty Dungu.
The institute also had name changes through the years, to the Institute for Tropical Diseases and Epizootics, and later the Institute for Transboundary Animal Diseases.
Scientific research was done by ARC-OVR, while manufacturing took place at the Kaalplaas facility of the ARC.
The Kaalplas facility was South Africa’s high-containment foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) vaccine production site, linked to the ARC’s Onderstepoort Veterinary Institute. It handled live FMD virus, which requires very high biosafety standards of at least a biosecurity level 3 (BSL-3).
The trouble began in the late 1990s and early 2000s, when global biosafety standards tightened for laboratories working with live FMD viruses. Facilities now had to meet much higher containment standards (known as BSL-3Ag). ARC’s Kaalplaas plant did not meet these requirements and was not upgraded in time.
In 2003-2004, production of FMD vaccines at Kaalplaas was legally halted for safety reasons, and the application of outdated technology using cell cultures to replicate live virus before inactivation.
Crucially, this happened without an alternative facility being ready. From that point on, South Africa lost its ability to manufacture FMD vaccines locally.
Upgrading Kaalplaas would have required hundreds of millions of rand. At the time:
Treasury funding was not allocated.
Animal vaccine manufacturing was treated as a cost centre, not a strategic infrastructure.
Responsibility between ARC, OBP, and the state was blurred.
So the facility aged out of compliance without replacement.
What followed was a long period of institutional drift.
The ARC retained scientific expertise at the FMD Institute for a limited period, but could not produce vaccines. This inevitably resulted in prominent and world-recognised veterinary virologists and researchers leaving the country and establishing themselves abroad with distinction in countries such as Australia, Italy and Europe.
OBP faced governance, funding, and quality challenges. No single institution was clearly responsible for safeguarding national vaccine security, and investment decisions were repeatedly delayed.
Why did the FMD vaccine production facility stay closed for so long? What should have been a short shutdown became nearly two decades because:
Importing vaccines was easier politically.
Rebuilding capacity required sustained state commitment.
Veterinary public goods quietly lost priority.
OBP’s broader collapse made revival harder.
Loss of essential scientific expertise.
Because outbreaks were sporadic, the problem remained largely invisible. When major FMD outbreaks returned after 2019, the consequences became clear: vaccine shortages, higher costs, reliance on imports, and severe trade disruptions.
Importantly and linked with this, was the strange and inexplicable insistence of the Department of Agriculture to try and regain and maintain the WOAH status prior to the outbreak, of the country being zoned free from FMD without vaccination, without acknowledging that the risk at that time, and more so today, could only be stopped by vaccination.
The vision of the agriculture ministry thus did not imply a need for vaccine, as that was not part of the vision to recover a status of free without vaccination – even though the disease at that stage in 2019 has already spread outside the FMD control zone into the previously free area.
There was also an apparent failure to fully appreciate that all the cloven-hooved animals outside the FMD control zone (i.e. all the animals in the then free zone from Limpopo to Cape Town) were unvaccinated and thus naïve and fully susceptible to infection with the FMD virus, thus posing an immense potential risk that needed to be protected. Thus, the urgent need to become self-sufficient in FMD vaccine supply to manage the risk when it occurs was sadly not realised.
The lesson is clear: this was not a scientific failure, but a failure of planning, coordination, and a lack of long-term public investment in a critical public good.
Foot-and-Mouth Disease (FMD) and Cattle Breeds: Susceptibility and Resistance
The timeline of this institutional collapse can be summarised as follows:
Pre-1994: System works (with flaws)
Agricultural Research Council (ARC) isolate FMD strains for vaccine production and scientific protocols.
Kaalplaas facility of the ARC produces FMD vaccines under international standards for FMD vaccines within a Biosecurity level 3 facility.
Onderstepoort Biological Products (OBP) distributes the FMD vaccines and manufactures and distributes all other animal vaccines.
The system is state-led, vertically linked, and functional.
Late 1990s: Rules change, system doesn’t
Global biosafety standards for live-virus laboratories tighten sharply.
Kaalplaas falls behind new BSL-3Ag requirements.
No long-term funding plan to upgrade facilities.
All early warning signs ignored.
2003-2004: Production stops
Kaalplaas deemed non-compliant and unsafe.
The factory is not capable of changing to the production of safer VLP vaccines (Virus-Like Particle (VLP) Vaccine) or even recombinant or DNA/RNA vaccines.
FMD vaccine production halted by law.
No replacement facility is ready, and a critical capability is lost.
Mid-2000s: Institutional drift
ARC retains scientific expertise for FMD research and development, but cannot manufacture the vaccine.
OBP struggles with governance, finances, and capacity.
ARC presented its business case for a new FMD manufacturing facility to National Treasury for the first time in 2007/08.
2010-2019: Strategic neglect, delays and some initial recovery
OBP enters repeated crises (quality failures, stockouts).
OBP had to upgrade the vaccine production facility due to new rules on Good Manufacturing Practices.
OBP requested R1.2 billion from National Treasury for the upgrade of the facility.
In 2013, Treasury allocated R492 million to refurbish the manufacturing plant and do the GMP upgrade.
Refurbishment work at the vaccine plant began in 2014, but the GMP guidelines changed, and a redesign was required.
The redesign and new guidelines resulted in new estimates, with a new GMP coming to R893 million.
By the end of the 2024/25 financial year, the GMP project plan was still not finalised – more than 10 years since the initial funds were allocated.
An initial small tranche of funds received from National Treasury was received in 2009/10 for the ARC-OVR vaccine business case.
ARC-OVR shows it can produce vaccines for all SAT strains and develop a business case for the construction of a new facility in 2012.
Treasury allocates R600 million to ARC over MTEF until 2018/19
The ARC embarked on a long-term project to modernise production using bioreactor (suspension) technology. ARC re-established the production technology, including training of Dr Faith Peta by Dutch scientists. By 2018, the ARC produced 50 000 doses of each strain in the same pilot laboratory (unregistered vaccine). During this period, vaccines were primarily sourced from the Botswana Vaccine Institute (BVI).
Procurement and tender issues resulted in the facility not being constructed, and costs increased to more than R1.6 billion currently.
2020-2022: Crisis exposed
Severe FMD outbreaks hit multiple provinces.
Export bans highlight cost of dependence on imports.
Emergency responses replace long-term planning.
Too late, too reactive.
The Ministerial Task Team on Animal Health Biosecurity is appointed.
2023-2026: Partial recovery
ARC begins reinvesting in high-containment capability.
After a long period of clinical trials, which were completed in 2018, registration of the vaccine was done in 2023.
Amid severe outbreaks, the Department of Agriculture fast-tracked the commissioning of a new mid-scale vaccine facility. Private sector groups also began direct procurement of imported doses to bypass state supply bottlenecks.
Local production slowly restarts (limited scale from a pilot laboratory) and the first batch of 12 000 is released in February 2026.
System still fragile and rebuilding trust as ARC awaits the R1.6 billion from National Treasury to upscale to a plant with full capacity (Note: it has been more than three years since the first application was submitted to National Treasury).
The period when all things started to go bad is between 2001 and 2006. During that time, Dr Nthoana Tau-Mzamane was appointed as the president/CEO of the ARC. It was during her tenure (between 2001 and 2006) that ARC lost its focus and contribution to agricultural research. It is still struggling to recover from those disastrous years when staff morale was low and top scientists left.
Experimental farms, laboratories and equipment were not maintained and went into disrepair. The heavy top management of the ARC and the expensive head office in Hatfield became a heavy cost burden, resulting in no funds available for new equipment. It was then exactly in those years that the FMD vaccine production facility was closed.
This analysis is a classical textbook case to show how political time horizons do not align with research agendas and timelines.
Politicians have a maximum five-year time horizon, while investment in research and research facilities takes 20 years or more to deliver results.
The reverse is also true – 21 years ago, South Africa failed to support FMD vaccine research and manufacturing, and now we are paying the price.
The whole cattle industry, the basis for households’ wealth in most rural communities, will be destroyed by the simple neglect, poor decision-making and funding two decades ago. This is something that will not be resolved overnight.
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PROF- JOHANN KIRSTEN
