Mpumalanga struck by foot-and-mouth outbreak

A second foot-and-mouth disease outbreak has occurred in South Africa’s eastern province of Mpumalanga. ‘Beeld’, a daily newspaper in Johannesburg, reported that several cattle in a feedlot in Middelburg, Mpumalanga, tested positive for the disease on Wednesday.

The Mpumalanga Agricultural Union (MAU) president, Lourie Bosman, described the outbreak as “a huge shock”, and said it was a different strain of the epidemic in KwaZulu-Natal which hit the south-eastern province three months ago. It could, therefore, be said with reasonable certainty that the disease had not spread from KwaZulu-Natal to Mpumalanga, news reports said. It was not known whether the disease was to be found outside the feedlot, in which 10,000 cattle are kept.

The outbreak was discovered when cattle tested positive for the disease at an abattoir in Swaziland.