2024-w1232 - 01 November 2024

1. (a) The Department did not fail to return test samples within the prescribed 90-day period.

(b) (i),(ii),(iii) From 1 January 2021 to 31 March 2024:

• The Transboundary Animal Diseases (TAD) Diagnostic Laboratory is a South African National Accreditation System (SANAS)--accredited laboratory and tracks the turnaround time of testing for all submissions received by the laboratory. On average the results for submissions received for testing of samples collected from African buffalo are issued within 4 days of samples being received; no submission received by the TAD Diagnostic Laboratory exceeded the 90-day period.
• The Bacterial Serology Diagnostic Laboratory is a SANAS-accredited facility that monitors the turnaround time for all test submissions. Samples from African Buffalo typically receive results within 7 days. Between 1 January 2021 and 31 March 2024, no submission took longer than 90 days to process.
• The Corridor Laboratory is a SANAS-accredited laboratory and the turnaround time is 10 days. We have included tests that went beyond the turnaround time for the period and indicated reasons for this. As may be seen this was mostly due to payment or information issues related to the client and not the laboratory. However, none of these exceeded 90 days.

(2)(a),(b),(c) The buffalo farm registration system is kept at the national level (former Department of Agriculture, Land Reform and Rural Development) and does not distinguish between land areas, farms, and reserves. Only the number of registered buffalo farms is captured.

The total number of registered buffalo farming units currently in Limpopo Province is 1658. The total number of registered buffalo farming units for the keeping of specific infection-free buffalo is 1577.

The number of specific infection-free buffalo farm units registered in Limpopo Province for the financial years 2021/2022 to 2024/2025 can be seen in Table 1 below:

Table 1: Number of new farms registered in Limpopo province for the keeping of buffalo.

(3)(a)(b) Surveys will include sampling by the veterinary authority according to a sampling plan designed beforehand and inspections will entail farm visits and inspection of animals for a specific reason which may result in actions such as sampling, treatment, and vaccination. The following should be noted while evaluating the information:

- Mpumalanga and Northern Cape have included all animal species, the information is not limited to buffaloes only.

- Mpumalanga province also provided information per district. See Table 3.

- Limpopo has provided information on buffalo farms only but indicated that they only have the capacity to conduct farm inspections when the farm is being registered as a farm for keeping buffalo and hardly ever during loading and offloading. No additional information was supplied.

(i),(ii),(iii) Please refer to Table 2 below:

Table 2: Number of Inspections and surveys on buffalo farms per province

Information on surveillance per district was provided by Mpumalanga State Veterinary Services for all animal species as can be seen in Table 3 below.

Table 3: Surveillance conducted in all animal species in Mpumalanga per district.

Information on inspections per district was provided by Mpumalanga State Veterinary Services for all animal species as can be seen in Table 3 below:

Table 4: Inspections conducted in all animal species in Mpumalanga per district.