SA’s foot-and-mouth epidemic may be far bigger than official figures suggest

Résumé détaillé

Recorded infections surged to 32 000 in 2025, but poor reporting and limited testing could be hiding the epidemic’s true scale.

South Africa is experiencing its worst foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) epidemic. Farmers have described the huge financial losses as well as hardship for workers and animals when their farms have had outbreaks.

In 2019 the World Organisation for Animal Health (WOAH) withdrew the FMD-free status that most of the country enjoyed. Consequently, our cattle product export markets were badly hit.

This week’s chart shows how FMD cases have surged in recent years, from below 100 a year from 2014 to 2018 (confined to an area near the Kruger National Park), to 32 000 in 2025 across the country. But we are sceptical of these statistics.

There are about 12 to 14 million cattle in the country. If less than 0.3% of them had been infected last year (which is what the stats show), this would be a much less serious epidemic than it has been. The statistics have been underestimated for a few reasons.

First, the Department of Agriculture and the Agricultural Research Council have not led a coordinated response to the epidemic, including providing one properly working central dashboard of reliable statistics. Instead, industry bodies, like the Milk Producers Organisation, the Red Meat Industry Services and a company called Buffalo Analytics, sometimes in coordination with provincial agricultural departments, have filled the void, doing their best to provide coherent statistics on aspects of the epidemic.

Read: South Africa warns of rising foot-and-mouth cases in wildlife Foot-and-mouth disease spreads to SA’s wildlife Foot-and-mouth disease is a supply chain crisis, not just a farming problem

Instead, a scathing government-commissioned report in 2022 found a lack of leadership, management and trust across South Africa’s agricultural animal sector. The few months we have been covering the epidemic have confirmed this. There’s also been a hefty dose of state corruption.

Second, some farmers understate or don’t report their outbreaks. Facing the threat of quarantine if they have FMD outbreaks…

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