2 million doses have apparently been administered countrywide yet the disease continues to spread. The first FMD case in our Western Cape was reported last week.
For the last 75 years the elephant in the room has not been addressed. FMD and all cattle diseases (in the words of Frank Newman Turner, more on him below) have only one cause and that is man.
Man destroys the cow’s immune system and is then taught that the pharmaceutical industry will fix the problem.
The basics of cattle husbandry are ensuring a varied diet of herbivorous plants and moving the animals at least once a day to fresh grazing. Depending on where you are farming and your access to water (either irrigation or rainfall) it is a minimum of 4 weeks before the cattle return to the same field. This breaks the parasite cycle and allows the plants to recover.
The cow is not a grain-ivore or a chickenshit-ivore or an expiredchip-ivore or a fruitpulp-ivore. It was designed as a herb-ivore.
Routine antibiotics and asthma drugs (beta agonists) are not in their dietary design either.
We don’t live in our toilets, yet man has ordained that most farmed animals have to live in theirs. This logic is upheld by all agricultural academia and taught to veterinary students as the standard.
In 1951 Frank Newman Turner (England used to produce lots of renaissance men like him – his biography is here) wrote a public letter to the British Minister of Agriculture challenging him to bring any FMD animals onto his farm and mix with his to prove that FMD did not infect healthy animals. Unsurprisingly they declined his offer and instead culled thousands of cattle.
His books (Fertility Farming, Fertility Pastures and Herdsmanship) are excellent. They helped me at the start of my farming journey in 2008.
I have managed to find an online copy of Herdsmanship which is here and is a funny and informative read.
In the book you will find Sir Albert Howard, the godfather of organic agriculture, writing about his experiences with FMD in India over a 26 year period in three very different areas. Also the experiments of the Marquis Stanga in Italy in the late 1930s. Such as smearing the lips and tongue of one of his healthy bulls with infected saliva…
Finally, according to acquaintances whose cattle have had FMD, the animals suffer in varying degrees, with 1% mortalities, for around two weeks and then recover. The meat and milk from these animals is perfectly fine to consume.
Angus
8 February 2026
