00:01South Africa's farmers are engaged in a long, arduous battle.
00:05They need to vaccinate almost 12 million cattle against foot and mouth disease.
00:11The illness, although not deadly in most cases,
00:14has severely affected the country's meat and dairy industry.
00:19Farms were rolling out vaccination campaigns with further vaccine deliveries this weekend.
00:25We are doing our vaccination drive here.
00:27We've actually just vaccinated about 120 cattle today alone,
00:32and the vaccination drive continues.
00:35We have been going to different areas,
00:37but this was one of our priority areas
00:39because of the importance of communal farms and communal farmers
00:43in terms of how we actually contain the spread in the province.
00:47The government officially declared the spread of the disease a national disaster.
00:52In recent months, it rolled out a mass vaccination plan
00:56and also started producing its own vaccine doses.
01:00We aim to vaccinate 80% of the national herd by December and reduce the outbreaks by 70%.
01:08This new strategy will put South Africa onto the path of becoming an FMD-free with vaccination country,
01:15which will mean that we can start to open up international markets
01:19for South African red meat products that have been closed for many decades.
01:23For the farmers, the clock is ticking.
01:26The vaccination campaign is their only hope for curbing their revenue loss
01:30and avoiding the culling of infected animals.
01:33The animals and the animals were consuming.
01:37The animals are almost one of our tribes.
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