A shortage of vaccines in the livestock and animal industries may lead to a red meat scarcity.

The jabs prevent blue tongue disease, and the shortage thereof is due to broken and outdated machinery.

The Red Meat Producers’ Organization’s chairperson, James Faber says farmers stand to lose 50% of their livestock, as a result of animals dying.

“What’s happening here is that they don’t produce any vaccines, and we can’t inoculate our animals. The animals are dying because of this. They’re getting fever, and they die from that,” says Faber.

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The organization says the public needn’t be alarmed by the blue tongue disease outbreak in animals, as the meat in shops is safe to consume.

“Luckily it is not transmitted to humans. It is still safe for humans (to consume). Please keep calm. Continue eating meat. Meat is the best protein you can get for yourself, so don’t be concerned. We are doing our best on this side, to produce as much meat as possible for the public,” says Faber.

However, with fewer animals, this poses grave danger to the relevant industries that stand to be impacted by this.

Faber has blamed state-run Onderstepoort Biological Products, for its failure to produce the much-needed jabs, or register new vaccines to safeguard animals.

A POSSIBLE END TO THE CRISIS

He, however, remains hopeful that authorities will soon find a solution:

“After this whole week that we’ve been in the media, they’ve made promises saying “give us 14 days and we will see what we can do” so we must monitor the situation. They have promised us that there will be a drastic change in the situation, in the next 2 weeks. Even at the registrar of medicines, where all vaccines are registered, there will be a change. We must give them these 2 weeks, and see what happens,” concludes Faber.