No such thing as zero risk in biosecurity

The Biosecurity Perspectives on Emergency Animal Disease Response seminar involved a panel of four including cattle producer Brigid Price, Price Cattle Co, Biosecurity Queensland's David McNab, Animal Health Australia action CEO Dr Sam Allan and Dr Crook.

To a small but engaged audience, the panel explained the various processes and guidelines that were in place in the event of a disease outbreak in Australia's livestock industry.

Dr Crook said the risk of a biosecurity breach was always present.

"The highest risks are those that are unmanaged, that we're not doing anything about," she said.

"For the beef industry, we are very aware and very alert of, in the global scheme, what those risks are.

"And that takes us back to 2022 with foot and mouth disease and lumpy skin disease out there and everyone's aware of that when they were detected in Indonesia.

"So there was a lot of interest in them and that gave us an opportunity for people to start to think about the risk, the preparedness, what is in place and what people need to be thinking about."

Dr Crook said with foot and mouth disease the most likely introduction pathway was going to be via a product illegally imported into the country.

"If it's introduced then it has to be introduced into a susceptible animal and then it has to be transmitted...so one of the high risk pathways is illegally imported food products that have the foot and mouth disease virus in them and then be feed to other animals," she said.

"Someone is going to introduce them somehow, whether they are carrying them on their person or whether they're mailing them in or whatever...the product will contain the foot and mouth disease virus and most likely be an animal product, a food product of some sort, unprocessed."

Dr Crook said any disease was a risk, but it was how it was managed and mitigated.

"If we talk about foot and mouth disease, we've had people going to countries where there's been foot and mouth disease present and coming back to Australia safely so our border force or border controls work in that situation," she said.

"So the risk is controlled and we have processes in place for it."

Dr Crook said risk was however different if something hits or changes that they did not know about for that particular pathogen and that was when it was much more difficult.

At the beginning of the seminar, the audience was told that the panel would explain what they needed to do in the case of emergency animal disease outbreak, who to call, how they would be impacted as a farmer and how they as farmers would be represented and heard during the decision making process that would affect their livelihoods.

A survey of the audience at the end of the seminar indicated that 86 per cent felt Australia is prepared and ready to respond to an animal disease outbreak, five per cent said 'no' while 14 per cent were still unsure.