Australian FMD outbreak most likely to be caused by imported meat or dairy products: WA biosecurity boss

WA’s biosecurity boss has urged livestock producers to remain vigilant against the threat of foot and mouth disease but says an outbreak in Australia is not as likely as some experts have claimed. Mia Carbon, who is executive director of biosecurity for the Department of Primary Industries and Regional Development, said while the rapid spread of FMD throughout Indonesia was “incredibly worrying”, Australia was “relatively well prepared”. She made the comments during a presentation at WAFarmers’ annual conference at Muresk Institute on June 24. “There’s been a lot of planning around FMD over the years,” Dr Carbon said. “There is an increasing risk to Australia from the outbreak in Indonesia, but it’s not as significant as you might think, and that’s because of the pathways.” If FMD did reach Australia, Dr Carbon said it would most likely be through the importation of contaminated meat or dairy products. She said this was the known source of many outbreaks internationally. “Once that happened, it would need to be fed or come into contact with a susceptible animal, and the most likely way by a long, long shot of that occurring is through it being illegally fed to pigs,” Dr Carbon said. “Once it’s in the animal population, the main way of that disease spreading is through the movement of infected livestock (and) infected fomites. “That’s vehicles, clothing, veterinary equipment, animal handling equipment — anything that goes between properties that can carry the virus.” Dr Carbon said FMD was an “incredibly infectious” virus that made COVID-19 look tame by comparison. She said FMD infected “most animals” it came into contact with. This was in contrast with lumpy skin disease, which is also running rampant in Indonesia and has the potential to reach Australia via wind-borne biting insects. “(FMD) would have the potential to move incredibly quickly if it got here, but it is a regulated pathway,” she said. “There are a lot of things in place at the border, and also pre-border, to try to manage the risk of that happening.” Biosecurity was a hot topic at the forum, with several speakers providing updates on what industry was doing to safeguard against the growing threats. Among them was WoolProducers Australia president Ed Storey, who said the organisation had for many years been engaging in “training and preparedness measures” through Animal Health Australia. “Wool brokers and everyone around the country (must) understand that one outbreak in Western Sydney means Tasmania and Fremantle wool doesn’t move, it stops,” Mr Storey said. “If it’s on a ship, it comes back and it won’t go until we can then provide proof of freedom, so the implications will be swift and dramatic.” Mr Storey said a silver lining of COVID-19 was that it had provided a “good preparation tool” in the event of an FMD outbreak. He noted Australia had a national vaccine bank in the UK, saying vaccination would be a “key initial response” in the event of an outbreak. If FMD did reach Australia, he said further damage would be done if the industry prematurely declared itself free of the disease down the track. “It would be very bad for Australia if we say we’re free and then a vaccinated animal turns up as a carrier later on and starts re-spreading it,” he said. “The sensitivity and specificity of tests are not 100 per cent to say if they’re not a carrier — they are only about 99.95 per cent — so one could slip through and that’d be all it takes. That that would be devastating.” Despite the warning, Mr Storey said it was “very comforting” to see increased risk management measures put in place at airports and ports across Australia. He said WPA was receiving weekly updates from the Australian Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry. An outbreak of FMD or LSD would see Australia’s meat and livestock export markets frozen overnight. WAFarmers livestock president Geoff Pearson pointed to new modelling by the Federal Government’s commodity forecaster ABARES, which revealed an outbreak would cost Australia’s livestock industries revenue losses of $80 billion over 10 years. “Spending money on biosecurity today would be very cheap insurance,” Mr Pearson said. “A priority for WAFarmers is to work with the State and Federal governments to ensure industry is appropriately funded and we’re standing by (for) biological incursions.” Meanwhile, Thomas Elder Markets analyst Andrew Whitelaw gave a firsthand account of the devastating economic and social impacts of the disease. Mr Whitleaw, who hails from south-east Scotland, said the region had still not recovered from a 2001 outbreak of FMD, which came on the back of a mad cow disease outbreak in the 1990s. “Australia is an export-dominated country when it comes to sheep and beef, so if we lose our export markets, our animals will be worth nothing, really, and it will cause untold economic damage to our rural areas,” he said. “Sheepmeat (exports from the UK) dropped immediately in 2001 and probably took about five years before we got anywhere near back to the same sort of levels. “I think it would be far worse if it hits Australia because we’ve got a tiny population and we can’t eat anywhere near enough sheep.” Mr Whitelaw said he did not believe WA’s sheep industries would recover from an FMD outbreak. “We would see more and more guys go into cropping where they can,” he said. “I think that could be quite a very quick, sudden change… and we’ve already got issues with logistics.” TEM anaylist Matt Dalgleish, who also spoke at the forum, said WA must implement and “fast track” compulsory electronic identification of sheep like other states such as Victoria had done. “If you need to trace (an animal) on the EID program, you get about a 98 or 99 per cent accuracy within a couple of days,” he said. “With the mob-based system, it drops to about 70 per cent accuracy, and that’s after about a month. “So if you’ve got to try to find part of the mob that’s been infected and gone through a saleyard, you’re stuffed, and by the time you find it, it’s going to be everywhere.”