Indonesia pledges to halt foot and mouth outbreak as virus fragments found in Australia

Viral fragments of foot and mouth have been detected in pork and beef products coming into Australia from China and Indonesia, ratcheting up fears the highly infectious disease could decimate the nation’s livestock industry.

Australia has been free of the disease for over a century but just one positive case of foot and mouth could shut the $27 billion livestock export trade down for months or even years. The federal government has estimated the total cost of a major outbreak at $80 billion.

The contaminated food products brought in by a traveller from Indonesia were undeclared. Credit: Nick Moir

The news comes as Indonesia implores Australia not to panic, despite a shortage of foot and mouth vaccines or even personnel to administer the shots to livestock as Australia’s northern neighbour battles its first outbreak of the virus in decades.

Foot and mouth infects cloven-hoofed animals and does not affect the health of humans. It can be carried on animal products including meat and leather and people can carry it on their shoes, clothes or in their noses, where it can survive for up to 24 hours.

Agriculture Minister Murray Watt revealed on Wednesday that viral fragments of foot and mouth disease had been detected in a beef product at an Australian airport, brought by a passenger from Indonesia.

Viral fragments are not live and cannot transmit the virus, said head of biosecurity at peak body Animal Health Australia, Rob Barwell. But their presence in meat products raised concerns that other tainted products had breached Australia’s biosecurity system.

Pork products on sale in Melbourne’s CBD were discovered during a routine inspection to carry viral fragments of both foot and mouth disease and African swine fever – another livestock disease Australia has managed to keep out.

“I’m advised that all products now of this kind have been seized from all linked supermarkets and a warehouse in Melbourne as well,” Watt said.

“In addition to this, a passenger travelling from Indonesia has in recent days been intercepted with a beef product that they didn’t declare, which tested positive for foot and mouth disease viral fragments.”

Watt said in addition to passenger checks at international airports, travellers would have to walk over sanitation foot mats to disinfect shoes and help dislodge dirt and other debris that could carry the virus.

National Farmers Federation chief executive Tony Mahar said the viral fragments showed that the “risk is heightened and increasing” and government must increase biosecurity measures to detect the disease in line with the escalating risks.

Victorian Farmers Federation president Emma Germano has called for a total ban on passengers bringing food into Australia on international flights, arguing the federal government’s biosecurity team was too short-staffed to check all edible products brought in by passengers.

There are at least 204 cases of foot and mouth in Bali, a tiny fraction of the nationwide total, but according to local news reports some owners have refused to allow their infected cattle to be slaughtered until they were told what compensation they would receive.

But the head of Indonesia’s National Disaster Mitigation Agency (BNPB) and foot and mouth taskforce said he was hopeful that within the next week, Bali would have eradicated the virus.

“Australia should not be worried because Indonesia is seriously handling the disease,” Major General Suharyanto told The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.

“Australian tourists usually go to Bali. We will make sure that Bali is green [no cases of foot and mouth]. We will do conditional slaughtering of cattle in Bali because there are not many. Hopefully, there will be no sick cattle in Bali.

“[Across Indonesia] our target is the next six months ... by early 2023 we hope the number of cases will decline significantly. Hopefully, it will be completely gone.”

There have been 401,205 cases detected across 22 of Indonesia’s 34 provinces, mostly in cows, according to its foot and mouth taskforce. Over 4000 animals have been slaughtered and another 2772 have died of the disease.

Animal Health Australia’s Barwell said “we’d be optimistic to think that they’ll get it sorted out in months and it could be years”.

The Indonesian government has imported 3 million vaccines from France, China, Brazil and Argentina to combat the disease, but doses had been given to only 540,978 cattle as of Monday.

Foot and mouth taskforce spokesman Professor Wiku Adisasmito told a media briefing that there were not enough people equipped to vaccinate livestock and it was difficult to keep the vaccines at a suitable temperature in remote and rural areas.

Mick Whettenhall, a cattle farmer from western NSW just returned from Bali to Australia on Friday said he believed the virus was circulating widely.

“It’s the proximity of livestock to people when they’re in Bali. People may step in dung or drag their bag through it and the likelihood of it having foot and mouth is at the minute really quite large,” Whettenhall said.

He and his wife ticked the box on their returning passenger card stating they had been on a farm. They technically did not enter a farm, Whettenhall said, but they stayed at a resort in Seminyak directly across the road from livestock paddocks.

But other people on his flight did not declare because, technically, they had not visited a farm, so their luggage was not checked or sprayed.

“Everyone else, and rightfully so, went to the baggage carousel, picked up their bags and walked out the door. But there’s at least one pair of shoes in every one of those bags that could have a clump of dirt or dung on them.”

With Karuni Rompies

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