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Australia

Farmers concerned at potential foot-and-mouth spread as Australia and Indonesia tackle outbreak

Farmers concerned at potential foot-and-mouth spread as Australia and Indonesia tackle outbreak

Nathaniel Rose kept his shoes and sandals separate from his main baggage as he traveled home from Bali to Melbourne last week.

During his 10-day holiday on the Indonesian island, Mr Rose said he was aware of concerns that tourists visiting Bali might bring foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) back to Australia, including via contaminated soil on footwear.

“I did one trip to Mount Batur that could be considered rural. We walked through the village along the dirt track,” he said.

As per Australian government advice, Mr Rose thoroughly cleaned his footwear before he got on the plane.

“There were foot-and-mouth disease signs at Denpasar Airport,” he said.

“When we got off [the plane] there were biosecurity officers and we had to walk on a disinfectant mat.”

a man smiling close up wearing a glasses
Nathaniel Rose took precautions to ensure he did not bring the disease from Indonesia to Australia.(Supplied)

An outbreak of FMD could devastate Australia’s livestock industries, cost the Australian economy around $80 billion, and lead to many animals being slaughtered to control the disease.

Those potential consequences are why the agriculture industry here has been begun on tenterhooks since an outbreak in Indonesia in May, with some calling for a travel ban.

Farmers and authorities in Indonesia are working hard to contain the virus’s spread, while the Australian government this week committed $10 million towards biosecurity measures in Indonesia to tackle the outbreak.

FMD is a highly contagious animal disease that affects all cloven-hoofed animals and is carried in many ways, including by live animals, in meat and dairy products, soil and untreated hides.

It is commonly spread between animals through inhalation, ingestion and contact with infected animals, but is not to humans, including by eating affected meat.

The virus is different to hand, foot and mouth disease common in children.

Local farmers implement strict controls

FMD Greenfields Farm East Java
Greenfields Indonesia own the biggest dairy farm in East Java.(Supplied: greenfieldsdairy.com)

The outbreak in Indonesia is the biggest since 1990 and is estimated to be costing the local economy $200 million per month.

Since May, 479,000 animals have been infected with FMD in Indonesia.

More than 9,000 animals have been killed to try to control the virus’s spread, while another 5,189 have died from the disease.

The province of East Java currently has the highest number of infections, with a mix of farms in that area, including smaller traditional farms and others run by large companies.

East Java’s biggest dairy farm is owned by Greenfields Indonesia, a company established by a group of Australian and Indonesian entrepreneurs.

Map of FMD cases in Indonesia
The provinces in Indonesia with the most foot-and-mouth cases.(ABC News graphic: Jarrod Fankhauser)

The farm, with 16,000 cattle, has implemented strict biosecurity measures, despite no cases of the virus being detected there.

Richard Slaney, from Greenfields Indonesia, said the company’s cattle underwent frequent health checks and were being vaccinated against the disease.

Mr Slaney said there were also strict controls to clean workers’ dirty clothing and footwear, vehicle tires and animal feed.

“No outside visitors are allowed to come [to the property],” I added.

He said vehicles were sprayed from “top to bottom”.

“All vehicles have gone through an additional cleaning process and very strict controls are also applied to the milk tank transport vehicles,” he said.

Small farmers can’t afford vaccines

a man is feeding his cows in a shed
Robi Gustiar says some farmers are having trouble accessing vaccines.(Supplied)

Robi Gustiar is a cattle farmer and the secretary-general of the Indonesian Cattle and Buffalo Breeders Association that represents small farmers who have between five and 30 cattle.

He said smaller farmers were also doing what they could to control the outbreak.

“For farmers who have up to five cattle, they spray disinfectant in locations around cattle pens and on vehicles.”

He said some farmers were still waiting for vaccines from the government, while medium and larger traditional farmers were proposing to purchase vaccines independently to access them faster.

FMD Greenfields Cows East Java
Larger farms, like the Greenfields farm in East Java, have better access to vaccines.(Supplied: greenfieldsdairy.com)

Mr Gustiar said small farmers could not afford vaccines and distribution was not easy.

“Indonesia is an archipelago country, so transportation is a problem. They [need to] make sure the vaccine is still active when it reaches the cattle,” he explained.

Australian government support for Indonesia announced this week included supplying more vaccines to Indonesia as well as protective equipment, training and expertise.

Agriculture Minister Murray Watt said $4 million of the $10 million dollars allocated was for vaccine purchasing.

“This is on top of support already announced for Indonesia, which included 1 million doses of foot-and-mouth disease vaccine and almost half a million doses of lumpy skin disease vaccine already committed by the Australian government,” he said.

Disaster authority bolsters Indonesia’s response

a man vaccinating a cow in a shed.
Indonesia has procured 3 million vaccine doses to tackle the disease.(Supplied: FAO Eko Prianto)

According to Indonesia’s Foot and Mouth Taskforce, more than 1.2 million doses of vaccine have been administered to animals.

Spokesperson Wiku Adisasmito said he hoped that the outbreak would be under control by the end of the year.

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Categories
Australia

Foot-and-mouth disease led to 6 million slaughtered animals in England 21 years ago. Could it happen in Australia?

A man in a green wet weather jacket stands in front of a herd of black and white cows.

Robert Craig’s memories of foot-and-mouth disease tearing through the north of England are more than 20 years old, but they’re as painful as ever.

“It still makes my hair stand on end now,” the dairy farmer said.

“You don’t realize at the time that things do affect you longer term.”

There has not been an outbreak of the disease in Australia for over a century, but cases detected in Indonesia in May have put authorities on high alert, and farmers fear what could happen if the disease lands in Australia.

Foot-and-mouth spreads rapidly between cloven-hoofed animals including cattle, sheep, pigs and goats. It’s serious and highly contagious.

Warning: This story contains images some readers may find distressing

In February 2001, Robert Craig was raising a young family in Cumbria, which became one of the worst-affected areas during a devastating outbreak of the disease.

It led to the mass slaughter of cows, pigs and sheep.

“I remember being out in the fields, I think spreading fertilizer, and they were rounding up these sheep and lambs and there’s this truck in the gateway,” he told the ABC News Daily podcast.

“Seeing them rounding up newborn lambs and you knew where they were going, that was just hideous. Absolutely hideous.”

Men checking cow carcasses as they are lined up with excavators in the background.
Slaughtered cows in Yorkshire were lined up before they were loaded onto trucks and transported to a burial pit.(Supplied: Bill Sykes)

Mr Craig said he remembers tracking the spread of the disease on a map and watching as it got closer and closer to his own farm.

“There was a real sense of despair. It was hard for people to see at that time how anything could get back to normality because such a huge number of livestock had been taken,” he said.

Over the course of 11 months, more than 6 million cows, sheep and pigs were slaughtered in an effort to contain the spread of the disease, although only a relatively small portion of that number had the infection.

In total 2,000 cases were ultimately confirmed across the UK.

“I don’t know whether it did any good either. There was a fair bit of panic at the time,” Mr Craig said.

“It was just like, removing as much livestock as possible to try and slow [it] down, to get in front of it because it had gotten so badly out of control.

“I don’t know if they even tested these sheep that were taken away.”

Mr Craig was one of the lucky ones whose animals were spared, but his community suffered badly.

“Pretty much all of our neighbors sort of succumbed to it at some point,” he said.

“The whole of our area was pretty much just dead, like no livestock at all.”

Dead cows being sprayed with disinfectant on a farm.
In 2001, destroyed cattle with foot-and-mouth disease were sprayed with disinfectant to stop the spread.(Supplied: Bill Sykes)

Australians sent to help

Australian vet Bill Sykes has similar “life-changing” memories of the time.

The Victorian, who had a background in national disease control and animal slaughtering, was sent to Yorkshire, in northern England, as part of an Australian contingent deployed to help.

“It’s 20 years on, there’s a lot of things I don’t remember since five minutes ago, but these things come back, and they haunt,” he told the ABC News Daily podcast.

Mr Sykes recalls how the abattoir workers would try to calmly gain the trust of bobby calves, or calves less than a month old, before the slaughter.

“The strategy was to put his finger in the calf’s mouth so that it would happily suck and while it was sucking, he’d shoot the animal with a captive bolt pistol, and it would drop and then he’d go to the next one .”

But for him, the destruction of newborn lambs via lethal injection was particularly devastating.

“They went limp in your arms, you put them down and you picked up the next one,” he said.

“And I happened to love little lambs. I found that real, real tough.”

Mr Sykes said the immediate impact of the disease in the countryside was stark.

“At the bottom of the valley, everything is normal, sheep and cattle grazing in the paddocks,” he said.

“By the time we get to the top of the valley there’s nothing there, it’s just an eerie silence. It’s a sea of ​​nothing.”

Two men walk towards green hill, lined with empty paddocks.
The “sea of ​​nothing” remained after neighboring Yorkshire farms had been “slaughtered out”.(Supplied: Bill Sykes)

Australia assesses its preparedness for an outbreak

Bill Sykes, who is also a former regional vet officer in the Victorian Agriculture Department and former Nationals MP, is enraged by reports of Australia’s biosecurity laws being breached.

Foot-and-mouth disease can be carried on meat and animal goods, and in one recent case, a backpacker returned from Indonesia with prohibited meat.

The passenger was fined $2,664 after being detected with undeclared sausage meat and a ham croissant at Darwin airport.

“Just unbelievably dumb. Stupid, thoughtless, call it what you like, but that’s the sort of situation that can occur,” Mr Sykes said.

Foot-and-mouth disease can also spread in air particles between animals situated closely together, through contaminated water and on clothing and footwear.

The risk of a foot-and-mouth disease outbreak in Australia has increased to approximately 12 per cent after the recent spread in Indonesia and its popular tourist island, Bali.

Mr Sykes said vigilance is paramount.

a number of officials in white coats inspecting sick cattle.
Officials from the Indonesian Ministry of Agriculture visit a farm in East Java where cattle have foot-and-mouth disease.(Supplied: Indonesian Ministry of Agriculture)

The Australian government has introduced a range of measures to lower the risk of foot-and-mouth disease entering the country.

Biosecurity measures have been ramped up at airports, including installing acidic disinfectant foot mats and increased surveillance on meat products entering the country.

Agriculture Minister Murray Watt announced a new task force will also be established to focus on how to best prepare for a potential outbreak.

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Categories
Australia

Agriculture Minister to release first National Biosecurity Strategy as disease threat looms

A man in a protective bee suit holds a frame from a beehive with bees on it.

Australia’s ability to protect itself from pests and disease is at the center of a new national strategy agreed to by federal, state and territory ministers.

Addressing the National Rural Press Club in Canberra today, federal Agriculture Minister Murray Watt will release the first National Biosecurity Strategy.

“The biosecurity risks we’re facing as a nation are closer and they’re more threatening than we’ve ever seen before and that’s partly as a result of climate change, shifting trade and travel patterns, different land uses,” Senator Watt told the ABC.

“There’s a range of factors we’re dealing with now as a country that we haven’t seen before and that is increasing the risk of biosecurity [issues] for our farmers and their products.”

The risks include the threat of African swine fever, lumpy skin disease and foot and mouth disease, which are currently spreading through nearby Asian countries.

Senator Watt said the new strategy would ensure governments and industry worked together to protect Australia.

“By aligning all the key players, we can ensure that everyone [is] working together to counter the biosecurity threats we face,” he said.

“Australia’s biosecurity system is a critical national asset and shared responsibility, and this strategy is for all Australians.”

According to the strategy, Australia receives 115 million parcels through its mail centers each year, with 2.6 million shipping containers arriving at the country’s ports.

Call for sustainable funding model

The strategy sets out six priority areas for governments, including “shared biosecurity culture, stronger partnerships, highly skilled workforce, coordinated preparedness, integration supported by technology, research and data; and sustainable investment”.

“We will ensure funding and investment is sufficient, co-funded, transparent, targeted to our priorities and sustainable for the long term,” the strategy states.

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Categories
Australia

WA biosecurity threats put Ord Valley agricultural region on edge

aerial view of a mango orchard

The recent spread of foot-and-mouth disease to Indonesia is not the only biosecurity battle for which farmers in WA’s easternmost agricultural region are bracing.

As the only growing region in WA that sits on an interstate border, the Ord Valley’s irrigated horticulture, broadacre cropping and sandalwood industries are on high alert as several dangerous pests and plant diseases creep further west.

Located just 40 kilometers from WA’s border with the Northern Territory on the outskirts of Kununurra, it is no stranger to biosecurity incursions.

It’s where the cane toad first crossed into the state more than a decade ago, and where the damaging fall armyworm affected the first WA broadacre crops in 2020.

It’s also close to where myrtle rust was found for the first time two months ago.

It’s feared mango shoot looper and banana freckle disease could be next after they were each detected in the Northern Territory this year.

Promising new project on hold

A man wearing fluoro yellow shirt holding log of wood in a shed
David Brocklehurst says the detection of myrtle rust has put a new project on hold.(ABC Kimberley: Courtney Fowler)

Sandalwood producer Santanol is among the hardest hit by the detection of myrtle rust on an East Kimberley pastoral station in June.

Myrtle rust is a fungal disease that can infect and kill plants in the myrtaceae family, such as eucalypts, bottlebrushes, paperbarks and peppermint trees.

While the disease poses no threat to Santanol’s primary sandalwood operation near Kununurra, a new pilot project targeting the cut flower and aromatic oil markets has been put on hold as a result of its spread to WA.

For commercial reasons, Santanol is remaining tight-lipped on the plant species being used in the pilot, but has confirmed it is part of the myrtaceae family.

Managing director David Brocklehurst said plans to expand the crop into broadacre trials this dry season were now too risky.

“We are very concerned that if the rust gets here and we’ve just planted 100,000 plants, then we would actually end up having nothing,” Mr Brocklehurst said.

“We’re keeping the plants well-quarantined and we’ll just see how this unfolds.”

The Department of Primary Industries said there had been no further detections of myrtle rust since its initial detection in June.

Horticulture sector on alert

Man in blue shirt inspecting green leaves and yellow flowers of mango trees.
Steve Angel is concerned about the detection of mango shoot looper in the Northern Territory.(ABC Kimberley: Stephanie Sinclair)

Meanwhile, the recent spread of mango shoot looper to the Northern Territory and detections of varroa mite in New South Wales has put Ord Valley mango growers on edge.

Mango shoot looper is an invasive pest that attacks mango and lychee plants while the varroa mite targets bees, which play a key role in the pollination of a variety of horticultural crops.

Swag Rural manager Steve Angel, who looks after WA’s biggest mango orchard on the outskirts of Kununurra, said he had limited vehicle movements across the property.

Mr Angel said he was also conducting regular checks of the orchard to ensure there was no sign of the pests.

He said the spread of either disease into WA would be devastating.

“If we didn’t control them and have preventive measures, there would be no sense being here,” Mr Angel said.

“People have got to be on the front foot and be aware, not on the back foot waiting for something, making contingency plans.

“We want to keep it out.”

Quarantined volumes soar

The back of a woman in yellow hi-vis watching a man open an esky in the back of a camper van.
A quarantine inspector checks a vehicle near Kununurra.(ABC Kimberley: Stephanie Sinclair)

Officers at the Department of Primary Industries and Regional Development’s quarantine checkpoint near Kununurra are the last line of defense in protecting the region from threats looming across the border.

According to new figures for the 2021-22 financial year, more than 14,000 kilograms of quarantine risk material was detected at the checkpoint, up more than 50 per cent from the previous year.

Supervising inspector Kenneth Bin Jacob said while the lifting of WA’s COVID-19 border restrictions largely contributed to the jump, the long-term trend showed more risk material was collected each year.

“We do see an increase each year — a slight increase,” he said.

“It never really goes backwards.”

Agriculture Minister Alannah MacTiernan said the state government had increased its biosecurity efforts in response to the outbreaks of plant diseases and pests in the Northern Territory.

“We are very aware of the risks of banana freckle and mango shoot looper and we’re working with the growers to up both our surveillance and our movement control,” she said.

“We’re also developing a broader biosecurity awareness program that we’ll be aiming at the punters, making sure that people understand that they’ve got a role to play.”

The heightened plant biosecurity concerns come at a time when Kimberley pastoralists are on alert for animal infections that have spread to Indonesia, including foot and mouth disease and lumpy skin disease.

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