Foot and mouth disease: WA drivers ‘sh...ing themselves’ they’ll spark outbreak amid call for truck wash stops

The urgent need for more truck wash stops in WA has been laid bare by a well-known livestock transport operator who has revealed he is “sh...ing” himself his drivers will be the cause of a widespread foot-and-mouth outbreak. Mark Talbot urged the State Government to urgently install a temporary wash-out facility for livestock trucks in the South West, before bolstering the number across WA. Mr Talbot said industry had been calling for more truck wash facilities for at least 20 years, but said the threat of an impending FMD outbreak had highlighted the risk of industry “grinding to a halt”. “We have lobbied for 20 years, with successive agricultural ministers, successive members of the Department of Agriculture and we just get told ‘there’s no money for this’,” he said. “We are in the firing line and we are probably going to be the cause of problems if there is an FMD outbreak. I am absolutely sh...ing myself.” There are eight truck wash stops in WA: at Geraldton, Kununurra, Katanning, Kalgoorlie-Boulder, Muchea, Mt Barker, Esperance and Kojonup – none of which are located in the South West. The wash out facilities in Kununurra and Kalgoorlie-Boulder are run by the State Government, Muchea is run by the WA Meat Industry Authority and the rest are run by their respective local government. Private abattoirs, including Harvey Beef in Harvey and Linley Valley in Wundowie, do have wash-down facilities for trucks visiting but they are not available to the public. Mr Talbot has operated his Brunswick-based livestock and rural transport business, Wedderburn Transport, for more than 20 years. He is also an executive committee member on the WA-based Livestock and Rural Transport Association and the national Australian Livestock and Rural Transporters Association. The LRTA has called for the number of wash-out facilities to be increased by at least two, with the need for one in the South West and another in the Kimberley — ideally near Broome — because there is not one between Kununurra and Geraldton. A fourth-generation beef farmer, Mr Talbot said the South West specifically should have four wash-out facilities, near the Boyanup Saleyards, Busselton, Manjimup, and at Kemerton. He runs a four-truck fleet and said his drivers would collectively, on average, cart 300 head of cattle and visit five or six different farms each day. “We wash out in our own facility – we bring all of the diseases back to my place (at Brunswick),” Mr Talbot said. “All of the livestock transporters in the South West, wash out on their own rural properties. That is all going to stop, particularly if there is a lockdown.” Mr Talbot said it was impractical to expect farmers to drive hundreds of kilometres to wash their trucks — saying from Busselton, he would have to drive 280km to Kojonup, Muchea or Mt Barker. “If you were to send a truck and trailer on that job, it would cost a transporter $1875 extra (to run the truck) … plus a $100 wash-out fee to use the facility,” he said. Mr Talbot implored the Department of Primary Industries and Regional Development to urgently increase the number of wash-out facilities in WA. “We need to get off the ground here, DPIRD has let us down over the years on this,” he said. “We have asked and asked. I don’t want to be an alarmist … but I am very concerned we have missed the opportunity to keep ourselves in a much safer place going forward.” A single truck carting cattle could generate 200 to 400 litres of effluent per trip, Mr Talbot said. “We spread that from the farm gate to the abattoir, wherever we go.” Mr Talbot also flagged concerns about WA’s four major saleyard facilities, at Muchea, Katanning, Mt Barker and Boyanup, saying there would be dozens of trucks doing multiple trips each week. “They don’t wash out because they don’t have time,” he said. “We are in the firing line. If there is FMD detected on our trucks, they will be stopped wherever we are in the State, and our trucks will be quarantined and impounded.”