Vet groups challenge FMD vaccine rollout over fairness and access fears

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DUDUZILE RAMELA: Government’s new foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) vaccination draft is facing opposition. The country’s veterinary profession is pushing back hard, warning the provision is legally unsound and could undermine the outbreak response.

At the heart of the matter is a requirement that SAVC-registered (South African Veterinary Council) veterinarians must also obtain approval from private body, Red Meat Industry Services (RMIS), before taking part in the national vaccination programme.

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The South African Veterinary Association (Sava) and the Ruminant Veterinary Association (RuVASA) have condemned this.

We speak to the president of the South African Veterinary Association, Dr Ziyanda Majokweni, who is going to be telling us more about this. Thank you very much, Doc, for your time. Let’s start with some context as to how we got here.

ZIYANDA MAJOKWENI: I think how we got here was that there was a version of the scheme that was submitted as part of the submission from the Department of Agriculture in response to the Sakeliga case.

That version of the scheme indicated quite a few areas that were concerning to the veterinarians, mainly, I will say, centralising some very key issues to a particular organisation in terms of various things.

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Talking about registration of veterinarians with that organisation, talking about defining animal traceability in terms of that meeting the interoperability needs of that organisation.

So we were then concerned as veterinarians because we felt that this would not, one, be fair to all the farmers because there’s an issue of access, and so on and so forth.

Secondly, veterinarians are already subjected to a registration process with the South African Veterinary Council, and we have run schemes before and have never needed to be registered with any private organisation.

So that was also a concern because that was not clarified.

One of the reasons why we felt that we needed to work with haste with this was that, in that version that was provided and in the submission made by the Deputy-General, it was indicated that it had been completed on the 23rd, and this would be looked at by the ministerial task team on the 24th and then signed by the minister (John Steenhuisen) and immediately gazetted.

We then felt that we needed, as an organisation, to sound the bell, to say no, but this cannot be. We cannot provide a version of this nature, of this scheme, which is supposed to be open to various users within the country.

Also be open to veterinarians, to be able to utilise the scheme and to allow other traceability systems to be used, because, for instance, government has developed a traceability system, it’s called List (Livestock Identification and Traceability System), which may not be as interoperable with the version of the traceability system that had been indicated.

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DUDUZILE RAMELA: So what we’re hearing here is essentially that there was no consultation with bodies such as yourself. So the due process wasn’t followed in terms of consulting you and other organisations. What do you know also about this private body, the Red Meat Industry Services?

ZIYANDA MAJOKWENI: The RMIS is an organisation of industry, and it represents various interests within industry, and it’s an organisation that we work well with. However, we’re just concerned about the way that the scheme was drafted.

In just [looking] at the one organisation, which we knew fully well does not represent all industry players, all farmers that needed to form part of the scheme. It was based on this that we also sounded that (alarm).

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However, since we have been told, though informally, that the issues that we had highlighted had been indeed looked at also by the MTT (Ministerial Task Team), and in the version that will probably go to the minister, then it will be a version that does not create a monopoly within the system and leaves it a bit more open for other players as well to come in and most importantly to provide a space for the government traceability system.

Therefore, based on that, we then wrote a letter to the minister to indicate that we have had these informal discussions, if that is the case, then withdraw because our interest was not to be adversarial, but to highlight concerns and issues that may impact on the legality of the entire process.

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As such, then that would have delayed the rollout of the vaccine. Otherwise, we as Sava, and also RuVASA, support the scheme, we support the rollout of the vaccines to contain the FMD outbreak.

We work on the ground with farmers. We have seen their plight. We work with them every day. We have been playing that role in terms of supporting them in responding to the FMD outbreak.

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So it is not true that Sava and RuVASA were trying to delay the scheme and the rollout of vaccination.

We are merely highlighting areas that we felt were problematic in the scheme, in the version that was provided to the court.

DUDUZILE RAMELA: You mentioned that you wrote a letter to the ministry. Any word on that? Any responses yet?

ZIYANDA MAJOKWENI: We did write a letter. We have not received a response to our initial letter, as well as we have not received a response to the second letter.

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So we are hoping that the ministry will then respond to our letter and allay our fears with the indication that indeed those issues have been addressed and the scheme as it stands does not include those matters that we felt were problematic, not only to veterinarians, but also problematic to farmers out there who are dealing with this FMD outbreak.

DUDUZILE RAMELA: Thank you, Doc. Dr Ziyanda Majokweni is the president of the South African Veterinary Association.

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