WA farmers fret over inability to prevent foot and mouth outbreak

Western Australian farmers are urging the McGowan government to step up their efforts to prevent a foot and mouth disease outbreak amid concerns the state has been too slow to act.

WAFarmers is concerned the WA government had not adequately funded its capabilities to prevent and contain a foot and mouth outbreak. Picture: Zoe Phillips

Western Australian farmers are urging the McGowan government to step up their efforts to prevent a foot and mouth disease outbreak amid concerns the state has been too slow to act.

WA Premier Mark McGowan has so far deferred to the federal government over how to prevent the current outbreak in Indonesia from making its way into Australia, talking down the need for potential restrictions on travel between the two countries or the introduction of measures around the cleaning or destruction of footwear on entry to Australia.

But WAFarmers chief executive Trevor Whittington said he was concerned the WA government had not adequately funded its capabilities to prevent and contain an outbreak, pointing to what he said was an ongoing decline in government funding for both biosecurity in the state and the broader Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry.

“The penny has still not dropped that we need more funding,” he said.

Cattle farmer Geoff Pearson said the state government’s response to the emerging issue “hasn’t been as speedy as we expected”.

He said the state and the industry needed to make sure that those Australians travelling to and from Bali properly understood what was at stake.

“We have also got to make our own public aware that they are vigilant enough and understand what the implications will be if we do get an outbreak,” he said. “Everybody will be affected by it right through the supply chain. If we thought we were uncomfortable with food security during Covid, this would be much worse.”

Opposition agriculture and food spokesman Colin de Grussa said the McGowan government’s deferral to the commonwealth on managing the risks around the disease was in sharp contrast to its handling of Covid, when the state regularly went against the federal government.

He said the perceived lack of action was the latest in a line of examples of the government neglecting regional WA, following its recent decisions to abolish regional representation in the upper house and the shutdown of WA’s native timber industry

Mr McGowan last week said the government had increased monitoring of the situation and had employed another 22 biosecurity officers to assist.