ASF, FMD and the Suspicion Protocol

#Three sows dead by Tuesday breakfast

They were fine on Sunday. On Monday two went off feed. This morning three are dead and a fourth will not get up, and you have no idea why.

You do not have a diagnosis. You are not going to get one this morning either — African swine fever is confirmed by PCR on organ samples at the ARC's Onderstepoort Veterinary Research transboundary animal diseases laboratory, and that takes as long as it takes. What you have is a sudden rise in mortality from an unknown cause. In South African law that is a suspicion, and suspicion is the whole trigger. Everything in this lesson happens before anybody knows what killed them.

Get this hour right, because ASF gives you nothing else. DALRRD's own surveillance report states it flatly: "There is no effective vaccination or treatment available for ASF. Control measures are based on quarantine and movement controls." Reporting, isolating and stopping movement is not one option among several — it is the entire toolkit.

#The hour: Regulation 12

The provision is Regulation 12(1), made under section 11(1)(b)(ii) of the Animal Diseases Act 35 of 1984. It is frequently mis-cited: Regulation 19, with its "within two days" deadline, is a different duty about animals found under section 12(1) of the Act. Reg 12 does not give you two days.

The legal position

Animal Diseases Regulations, GN R.2026 of 26 September 1986 — Regulation 12.

Reg 12(1) — report forthwith, verbally, to the responsible State Veterinarian or responsible technical officer, and confirm in writing as soon as possible thereafter.
Reg 12(2) — the written report must contain: your name and addresses; a description of the animal or thing, including any brand or ear mark; the symptoms shown; and where the animals are being isolated.
Reg 12(3) — and this is the one nobody knows. You must also forthwith notify:
- (a) every owner or manager of adjoining land, and every owner of susceptible animals on the same or adjoining land; and
- (b) every prospective buyer of your susceptible animals, and every person who bought susceptible animals from you in the preceding 30 days.

Work the 30-day call list before you need it. Say you sold twelve weaners last month: five to a neighbour, four to a man who paid cash, three at the farm gate to someone whose name you took but not their number. Two of those transactions you can phone in five minutes. The third you cannot phone at all — and that is the one that spreads it. The compliance failure and the epidemiological failure are the same failure, and both are fixed months earlier, in a sales register.

#Two lists, two regulations, one phone call

The terminology creates a dangerous mistake: farmers hear "notifiable" and assume anything not on the notifiable list need not be reported. For pigs, that gets it exactly backwards.

Category	The pig entries	Reported under
Controlled animal disease (Table 2)	African swine fever; anthrax; Aujeszky's disease; brucellosis; European/classical swine fever (hog cholera); foot and mouth disease; porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome (PRRS)	Reg 12(1), plus the Reg 12(3) notifications
Notifiable animal disease (Annexure 3)	Swine erysipelas — the only pig disease on that list	Reg 12A(1), which binds a veterinarian, a laboratory or any other person

ASF is not on the Annexure 3 notifiable list. It is a controlled disease in Table 2, reportable under Reg 12(1) — and DALRRD's own strategy states that "ASF is a disease that is notifiable to the World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE) and has trade implications when reported." The label differs. The duty does not. Suspect ASF in one pen and erysipelas in another and you report both, immediately, to the same state veterinarian, under two different regulations.

#What you may not do to the carcass

Careful — this one bites

Regulation 23(1) reserves incision of the carcass to a veterinarian or a responsible technical officer where ASF, Aujeszky's disease, FMD, glanders, classical swine fever, rabies, anthrax, psittacosis, rinderpest or swine vesicular disease is present or suspected. Cutting a suspect pig open to "see what it was" is an offence and, for some diseases on that list, a way to make the ground itself dangerous for years.

Regulation 22 goes further: while a contact or infected animal is held in isolation on your land, you may not slaughter any susceptible animal on that land except under the written authorisation of the state veterinarian and on its conditions. Salvaging the healthy-looking pigs into the freezer is exactly the behaviour it exists to prevent.

Regulation 23(3) sets disposal: burn or incinerate, then bury the remains at least 1.3 m deep — or bury at least 1.8 m deep, covered with quicklime — subject to local-authority by-laws. Regulation 23(5): no exhumation without written state-veterinary authorisation. Decide where that pit can go, and whether your municipality permits it, before you are standing over a dead sow.

#The line somebody drew in 1935

The legal position

Movement provisions that apply to pigs and wild suids.

Reg 20(1)(a)(vii) — a state-veterinary permit is required to move any controlled animal or thing to, across or from land in a controlled area.
Reg 20(1)(c) — "No responsible person in a controlled area" may allow a controlled animal or thing to be moved off their land before ascertaining that a permit was issued. Note the limitation: this pre-movement check binds persons inside a controlled area. If you farm at Meyerton you are outside it — until a quarantine is served on an outbreak, at which point every movement becomes a permit application overnight.
Reg 20(1)(a)(v) — live buffalo, warthogs, bushpigs, wild pigs and ostriches may not be moved from the land where they are kept to any other land without a permit, anywhere in the country.
Reg 20(1)(a)(ix) — warthog, bushpig and wild pig carcasses, meat, skins, trophies and other products may not be moved to, across or from Gauteng, Mpumalanga, Limpopo, North West or KwaZulu-Natal. That catches the hunter bringing a bushpig home as readily as a trader.
Table 2, ASF row, column 4, item 1 — all pigs inside the controlled area (excluding untamed wild pigs, warthogs and bushpigs) must be kept in pig-proof camps, kraals or pens. The same requirement attaches to classical swine fever.

Contested — here is both sides

Does the controlled area still mean anything?

The law says yes. Table 1 of the regulations describes it as the Kruger National Park plus a long schedule of pre-1994 magisterial districts — Bochum, Ellisras, Giyani, Ingwavuma, Letaba, Messina, Nelspruit, Pietersburg, Soutpansberg, Thabazimbi, Thohoyandou, Waterberg, White River and many more. The zone was instituted in 1935, and it is still the operative law: a permit condition written against it binds you regardless of what the science says.

The science says no. Craig et al. found ASF virus in 50 of 711 Ornithodoros tick pools, with positive ticks at seven locations outside the controlled area — in North West, Northern Cape and the Free State — and concluded there was strong evidence that virus in sylvatic circulation outside the demarcated area has ignited infection in domestic pigs on occasion.

The department agrees with the science. DALRRD's own 2024 strategy states that researchers found the sylvatic cycle outside the demarcated area "which demonstrates that the current described controlled area is no longer relevant", and proposes amending it.

Teach: obey the line, because it is the law and it is enforced. Never believe it protects you. A legal boundary is a compliance obligation, not a biological fact.

Foot and mouth disease belongs in the same conversation, and pigs are squarely inside it — FMD is a controlled disease of all cloven-hooved animals. The departmental report at 31 March 2026 lists 1 205 open outbreaks nationally, 227 of them in Gauteng, and SAT1 has been isolated from pigs in the Free State. Vaccination may only be performed by state veterinary services, and the industry position reported in January 2026 is that no FMD vaccine is approved for swine in South Africa. For a pig unit, biosecurity is not the first line of defence — it is the only one. The next lesson prices the consequences.

#The reason the state cares about your slaughter shed

There is a public-health thread under all of this, and it is why "I'll slaughter at home and sell to the neighbours" is treated as seriously as it is.

One finding from a second Gauteng survey is worth building your farm around: absence of a quarantine facility was a statistically significant ASF risk factor (p < 0.05) across 137 farms in Ekurhuleni, Lesedi, Tshwane and the West Rand. A quarantine pen is a shed, a fence and a discipline — the cheapest thing on this list and the one most often skipped.

#What to do on Monday

Put the state veterinarian's number in your phone under a name you will find at 06:00, and introduce yourself before you need them. Then open your sales book and ask whether you could produce every buyer from the last thirty days, with a working phone number, inside the hour. If you cannot, you have a Reg 12(3) problem you can fix this week with a notebook — and an epidemiological hole you cannot fix any other way.

#Check yourself

4 questions — answers explained as you go

1You suspect African swine fever. You phone the state veterinarian immediately and send the written confirmation the same afternoon. Have you discharged your legal duty?
Why: Reg 12(1) and 12(2) cover the state vet and the content of the written report; Reg 12(3) adds a separate, immediate duty to warn the people you could already have infected. The "two days" figure belongs to Reg 19 — a different duty, about animals found under section 12(1) of the Act.
2Which is true of African swine fever's legal status in South Africa?
Why: The categories are separate lists under separate regulations. ASF sits in Table 2 with anthrax, Aujeszky's, brucellosis, classical swine fever, FMD and PRRS. Swine erysipelas is the single pig disease on Annexure 3, reported under Reg 12A(1) by a vet, a laboratory or any other person. The label differs; the duty to pick up the phone is immediate either way.
3Your farm is well outside the legislated ASF controlled area. What does that tell you about your risk?
Why: Craig et al. found ASF virus in 50 of 711 tick pools, including at seven locations outside the area, and DALRRD's own strategy says the described area "is no longer relevant". Obey the boundary because it is law and carries permit conditions — but do not treat being outside it as protection.
4A pig dies suddenly and you want to know what killed it, so you open the carcass in the shed to look at the spleen. What is wrong with this?
Why: Incision is reserved by regulation for good reason: several diseases on that list — anthrax in particular — become far more dangerous once the carcass is opened. Diagnosis for ASF is by PCR on samples taken by the professional. Disposal is prescribed too: burn and bury the remains at least 1.3 m deep, or bury at least 1.8 m deep with quicklime.