Agriculture
SA retains foot-and-mouth disease free status─── SABRINA DEAN 18:47 Mon, 16 Mar 2015
Pretoria - The Agriculture Department says it is committed to ensuring total compliance to the requirements of the World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE) so that South Africa retains its foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) free status.
This was revealed during a briefing in Pretoria today by Agriculture Minister Senzeni Zokwana and Deputy Minister Bheki Cele.
The ministers provided feedback on engagement with communities and roleplayers in three affected provinces, as well as progress made in addressing non-conformances noted by OIE expert mission in 2013.
Zokwana’s spokesperson Steve Galane says the FMD free status is important to facilitate international meat exports:
'Steve Galane'
Zokwana told journalists the Scientific Commission for Animal Diseases concluded that South Africa has made commendable progress to comply with the relevant requirements of the Terrestrial Animal Health Code for the maintenance of its FMD-free status.
According to Sapa, the department and government departments in Limpopo, Mpumalanga and KwaZulu-Natal had made progress on the implementation plan for "operation compliance", drawn up in December 2014.
This included the repair and maintenance of the fence on the South Africa-Zimbabwe border; a plan to deal with the handling of carcasses in abattoirs that came from protection zones; and the distribution of 300,000 doses of FMD vaccine.
Surveillance plans and movement control areas had been established. Meetings held in the affected provinces in January raised awareness of FMD and identified issues still to be addressed.
Sabrina Dean/OFM News and Sapa
'Steve Galane':
