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South Africa Says Some Nations Eased Trade Controls After Disease Outbreak
South Africa, the world’s second- largest exporter of wool used to make clothes, said three of seven countries eased trade restrictions on animal and related exports from the nation where more than 8,500 animals have been killed by Rift Valley Fever.
Zimbabwe lifted all trade restrictions while Lesotho and Namibia partially eased controls, Willie Ungerer, deputy director of epidemiology at the directorate of Animal Health in South Africa’s Department of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, said in an e-mailed response to questions yesterday.
Barriers on shipments of salted hides and skins, as well as greasy wool and mohair, to China and Turkey, remain in place, as do controls on exports of beef to the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, he said.
Wool prices will be “depressed” in South Africa this season because of the restriction in China, the African nation’s largest export destination, industry group Cape Wools SA said on Aug. 18.
More than 13,800 animal cases of Rift Valley Fever have been reported in eight of South Africa’s nine provinces, including Gauteng, its economic heartland, Ungerer said.
Rift Valley Fever is caused by a virus that is spread by mosquitoes and causes miscarriages in sheep, cattle and goats. It can kill animals and infect humans through contact with blood or organs of infected animals, according to the World Health Organization.
‘More Outbreaks’
A total of 228 human cases of Rift Valley Fever had been registered as of July 16, according to the website of the National Institute for Communicable Diseases. Twenty-six of those were fatal, it said.
More outbreaks of the disease are expected during the summer as a result of the “normal seasonal increase” of mosquitoes, Ungerer said.
The Rift Valley Fever outbreak was confirmed by laboratory tests on Feb. 18 this year and probably started during the middle of January in South Africa’s Free State province, the Department of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries said in a presentation on the Agriculture Business Chamber’s website. The outbreak peaked in the 12th week of the year and has been tapering off during the colder winter months, it said.
Rift Valley Fever was first identified in 1931 during an investigation into an epidemic among sheep on a farm in the Rift Valley of Kenya, according to WHO.
In 1997 to 1998, an outbreak occurred in Kenya, Somalia and Tanzania and in September 2000, cases were confirmed in Saudi Arabia and Yemen, marking the first reported occurrence of the disease outside the African continent, according to the WHO’s website.
Australia is the world’s largest producer of wool used in clothes while New Zealand is the second biggest.
To contact the reporters on this story: Carli Lourens in Johannesburg at clourens@bloomberg.net
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