The outbreak in Africa causes countries to halt their beef exports - Milliyet

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According to a statement from the Ministry of Agriculture, an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease has been reported in a commercial livestock region in Namibia for the first time in 60 years, leading to a nationwide ban on meat exports.

Foot-and-mouth disease (FMD), as it is also known, is a highly contagious viral infection that is not dangerous to humans but affects cattle, sheep, goats, and other cloven-hoofed animals. 

Namibia became the eighth country in southern Africa to be affected by foot-and-mouth disease this year, following Namibia, Botswana, Eswatini, Lesotho, Mozambique, South Africa, Zambia, and Zimbabwe.

 The ministry announced that the virus has spread to a region that has been officially free of foot-and-mouth disease since 1964.

Agriculture Ministry spokesperson Romeo Muyunda told AFP, “This is the first outbreak we’ve experienced since our independence, and it will have a negative impact on the sector.”

According to the National Livestock Producers Association (Nammic), more than 13,381 metric tons of beef were exported in 2025, and over 90 percent of that was shipped to Europe.

It was reported that a “national state of disaster” had been declared in the Republic of South Africa earlier this year due to a foot-and-mouth disease outbreak affecting the entire country.

Elias Sithole, head of the National Disaster Management Center, stated in a press release that the foot-and-mouth disease outbreak in the Eastern Cape, Free State, Gauteng, KwaZulu-Natal, Limpopo, Mpumalanga, North West, and Western Cape provinces had reached the scale of a national disaster.