Farmers urge policy shift on foot-and-mouth outbreak as farms become overcrowded

Calling for new risk assessment and financial compensation, co-op says new Agriculture Ministry guidelines take the wrong approach

The Agriculture Ministry agreed on Monday to partially ease movement restrictions for animals in quarantine zones established to combat a new strain of foot-and-mouth disease that is sweeping the country.

The new guidelines followed pressure from farmers opposed to the blanket prohibition on moving animals within a 10-kilometer (six-mile) radius of an outbreak, which they said was causing overcrowding that harms animal welfare and financial losses of up to NIS 830,000 ($285,000) per farm.

The virus has already affected nearly 120 farms and spread rapidly to wildlife, with dead gazelles found in the Tavor Stream and Golan Heights in the north. In response, the Israel Nature and Parks Authority closed wildlife breeding sites in the northern Carmel and southern Yotvata on Friday as a precaution.

Foot-and-mouth disease is a highly contagious viral infection that affects cloven-hoofed animals. While the disease is endemic to the region, this year’s strain — SAT1 (South African Territories type 1) — is entirely new to Israel, likely having entered via Lebanon after spreading to the Middle East from Africa. Routine vaccinations did not previously include the SAT1 variant.

The virus causes high fever and painful blisters on the mouth, tongue, muzzle, hooves, and teats. It leads to a sharp drop in milk production. The disease does not affect humans.

The quarantine process, still in place, is rigorous. A closure is imposed when a proven outbreak occurs. The disease lasts two to three weeks. Once symptoms vanish, a one-month countdown begins for all farms within ten kilometers. The original outbreak farm must remain closed for an additional month. Any new outbreak restarts the clock.

The ministry’s new guidelines apply mainly to cattle in farms around the one with the outbreak. They specify the number of days that must pass after the start of the month-long countdown before animals can be moved.

But as Dr. Shani Scheinin, chief veterinarian at Hachaklait, a cooperative that provides veterinary services to 80 percent of dairy farms, noted, the guidelines provide little help to farms where the disease has broken out. The only animals allowed to be removed from such farms are those being sent for slaughter. That is 14 days after the beginning of the one-month countdown and subject to a veterinarian’s approval.

If a farmer has imported young calves for fattening, for example, and the disease breaks out, the farmer can be stuck with them for weeks, unable to send them on for fattening or to have them slaughtered because they are too young, Scheinin explained.

An infected dairy farm cannot sell its female calves to other dairy farmers or move its male calves elsewhere for fattening, she went on. This meant overcrowding, the fast spread of the virus, and, in some cases, the death of the calves.

Scheinin noted that an unknown number of farmers, mainly in the Arab and Bedouin sectors, were not supervised by the Agriculture Ministry and were not legally obliged to hire vets.

It would be fairer, she continued, to allow farms where outbreaks have occurred to move vaccinated animals after a certain time period has elapsed and no new cases have emerged, given that the chance of them infecting others would be negligible. Forcing overcrowding and financial losses on farmers who obeyed ministry guidelines while unsupervised farms maintained their flocks without vaccination is not logical, she contended.

The current strategy involves administering two additional vaccines containing the SAT1 strain rather than culling herds. Private vets, mostly working under Hachaklait, are vaccinating herds nationwide after the ministry chose to supply them with doses rather than vaccinate directly.

After initially obtaining 150,000 vaccination doses, Israel prioritized livestock within five kilometers (three miles) of all borders and dairy cows within 10 kilometers of borders to protect food security. A subsequent 250,000 doses were administered to dairy herds from the Golan to Beersheba.

With one million more vaccines arriving this week, Dr. Scheinin expects the outbreak to subside in approximately two months, aided by rising temperatures, which the virus cannot survive. Hachaklait is also launching research to gather data on the outbreak, noting that many farms are not legally required to hire supervised vets.

The Agriculture Ministry stated that it has obtained two million vaccine doses to date. While declining to answer questions about economic damage and compensation, the ministry stressed that meat prices are not expected to rise as livestock fatalities remain negligible.