What a foot and mouth disease outbreak would mean for Australia

Australia’s meat, dairy, wool and live export trades would be frozen overnight and a three-day national “livestock standstill” imposed if foot and mouth disease reaches Australia. The swift and drastic measures are among a range of plans in place should the extremely infectious livestock disease be detected in Australia, a spokeswoman for the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry said. These precautions, she said, would complement tough biosecurity measures imposed last week after it was confirmed FMD — which has been running rampant in Indonesia since early May — had spread to Bali. “In practice, detection of FMD would prevent export of animals and animal products,” the spokeswoman said. “This means animals would also stop going into export abattoirs and states free of disease would prevent movement of animals from affected areas crossing their borders.” Under agreed national response plans, a 72-hour national livestock standstill could be implemented to prevent animals moving between properties, saleyards, feedlots and abattoirs. “This is intended to buy time, to identify where the infection is present and which areas remain free of FMD,” the spokeswoman said. “There are well-established plans in place should FMD be detected in Australia, including an FMD vaccine bank.” Australia’s vaccine bank, located in England, was established in 2004 in the wake of a devastating FMD outbreak in the UK three years earlier. THE COST OF AN OUTBREAK A major FMD outbreak in Australia would cost the nation’s economy up to $80b over 10-years according to the Federal Government’s commodity forecaster, ABARES. As well as the mass destruction of livestock and the collapse of export markets, WAFarmers president John Hassell said domestic livestock prices — which have been riding record highs — could also plummet. “Because there’d be extra on the market, locally prices would crash in the saleyards and industries would crash,” he said. “There’d be a huge amount of hurt out there… we’re talking serious pain for the Australian economy, so the flow-on effects would be huge.” Pastoralists and Graziers Association of WA president Tony Seabrook said the cost of an Australian FMD outbreak would be “horrific”. “This is, without any shadow of doubt, the greatest biosecurity threat this nation has ever been confronted with,” he said. But Mr Seabrook said locking down livestock would be an “incredibly complex” measure, noting many would already be in transit. “As an association, we’re trying to get local governments to retain whatever stockyards existed in their Shire, because you can’t just leave (animals) on the truck,” he said. “They’ve got to come off somewhere, but it’s not as simple as taking them back home again, because that truck might have had some infected animals on it before it had your animals on it.” LEARNING FROM THE UK According to the UK’s National Audit office, the 2001 FMD outbreak cost the public sector more than £3b and the private sector more than £5b. While only 2000 cases were officially confirmed, the BBC reported more than six million sheep, cattle and pigs were culled. This was because the culling policy required not just all livestock on the infected farm to be killed and burned, but also all susceptible animals in the surrounding area. It took nine months to control the outbreak — the source of which remains a mystery — after the first case was discovered at an abattoir in Essex, south-east England, in February 2001. By the second week, cases were confirmed as far away as Scotland, North Wales and Cornwall, with exclusion zones making travel in some areas virtually impossible and devastating the tourism industry. Industry subsequently implemented identification and tracing systems and rehearsed contingency plans, while the UK Government introduced a livestock standstill policy of six days for sheep and goats, and 20 days for pigs. However, this drew criticism from some farmers who thought the length of the standstill was too extreme. DAFF said there was much to be learned from the UK’s experience. “The 2001 UK outbreak had significant impacts on farmer health and wellbeing, and on allied industries such as tourism,” the spokeswoman said. “We learn from their experience that it is not enough to simply eradicate the disease, but to also consider the collateral impacts on emotional wellbeing of farmers and rural communities and be cognisant of impacts upon other aspects of the economy and society.” A FIRST-HAND EXPERIENCE Thomas Elder Markets analyst Andrew Whitelaw, who lived in south-west Scotland during the outbreak, said the region had “still not recovered economically or socially”. “My hometown was largely closed down during 2001, with soldiers on the streets, checkpoints at farm entrances and the popping sounds of animals being culled,” he said. “I saw first-hand the impact that FMD had on my community (and) the economic impacts, through the lack of tourism and businesses shutting down. “However, these pale to the psycho-social effects of the depression and suicides which followed in the wake of FMD.” Mr Whitelaw said it was difficult to measure the exact impact FMD had on UK beef exports because it followed a 1996 outbreak of mad cow disease, with both disasters leading to subdued exports until the late 2000s. But FMD’s impact on sheepmeat was “far more immediate”, with exports plummeting 70 per cent in 2001 and taking about five years to return to previous levels. Australia relies heavily on beef and sheepmeat exports, with only 30 per cent and 28 per cent respectively consumed domestically. Nevertheless, Mr Whitelaw said Australia appeared to be in a “much better position” than the UK had been. “When (the UK) had the FMD outbreak, no one had really dealt with it before,” he said. “It was all a bit of trial and error, but hopefully (Australia) can learn from the outbreaks we’ve had elsewhere.”