Foot-and-Mouth Disease Guidelines

Biosecurity Guidance To Support Raw Milk Movement And Handling At Processing Facilities During A Foot-And-Mouth Disease Outbreak

SCOPE

The guideline document focusses on developing biosecurity criteria for dairy processing plants with the intent that details of specific options for achieving these criteria will be acceptable to the Directorate: Animal Health and provincial state veterinary offices moving forward.

OVERARCHING GOAL

This guideline document is intended to provide guidance which will assure that milk tankers entering milk processing premises from dairy farms with or without evidence of foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) virus infection within an FMD control area, contain no external contamination with FMD virus. Further, it seeks to prevent any cross contamination between raw milk potentially contaminated with FMD virus and people, vehicles, and processed milk products. Thus, ideally, there will be negligible risk of FMD virus spread from a milk processing facility.

Initial focus: Raw milk movement from a dairy farm with no evidence of FMD virus infection in an FMD control area via milk tanker to processing.

Management control to note the following:

• FMD has been diagnosed in South Africa in various provinces with the risk of spreading across provincial borders if not fully controlled.
• Establishing effective control measures in and around infected areas and constant monitoring/surveillance of FMD control area(s) is a legal requirement enforced by the Department of Agriculture, Directorate: Animal Health.
• Animal and dairy product movement restrictions are controlled in terms of FMD protocol issued by the Directorate: Animal Health and are applicable to FMD infected dairy farms and processing facilities handling the FMD milk.
• Dairy farms with no evidence of FMD virus infection based on visual assessment may continue to move raw milk to processing facilities.
• In support of biosecurity, the criteria as outlined in this guideline are to be implemented and verified.
• Milk that is collected from an infected dairy farm and transported to an approved (Department of Agriculture, Directorate: Animal Health) processing facility may only be done under a Red Cross permit issued by the provincial state veterinary services.
• Other product/animal/people movement to be examined, monitored and disinfected, as needed to prevent possible spread of the FMD virus.