Red meat industry to review export ban

Image: Suat Eman / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

The SA Red Meat Industry Forum's Dave Ford says the department undertook to draw up a series of steps aimed at ending the ban, which was self-imposed in February 2011 after an outbreak of the disease in northern KwaZulu-Natal. "They agreed to submit the plan to us but we haven't received it yet," Ford says. Losses to the industry have been estimated at R400m.

Agriculture department spokesman Steve Galane says the national department is getting information from the KwaZulu-Natal department on the status of disease controls. This will be submitted to the World Organisation for Animal Health for a decision.

Dirk Verwoerd, staff veterinarian of Karan Beef, SA's biggest red-meat producer, says a lifting of the ban would be subject to a "highly technical, complex and convoluted process" that would include a period of six months since the last case of the disease was identified. "SA's entire plan for preventing the disease will be reviewed, with all sorts of rules applied."

Like the rest of Africa, SA normally exports only small quantities of red meat, to Angola, Zambia, Mauritius, Seychelles and the Middle East.

Karan says no more than 5% of its production is exported, and this is typical for the rest of the industry. Exports have fallen to about 2% of production.

Verwoerd says SA's meat is "absolutely safe" to eat. "Foot-and-mouth disease is not a zoonose (transferable to humans) and there is zero risk." The ban is to prevent the disease being transported from endemic areas such as Southern Africa to Europe and the US, where it can decimate herds. With neighbouring countries, he says, "we normally resolve these things regionally".

Source: Financial Mail