FMD on packing straw sparked 1872 outbreak in Werribee

The FMD virus entered Australia 150 years ago on straw from England that triggered an outbreak in cattle and pigs at Werribee.

Australia’s last foot and mouth disease outbreak was sourced to contaminated packing straw from England, used as bedding straw at Cunningham’s stables, at what was then known as the Deer Park Hotel, near Melbourne.

The last time foot and mouth disease hit Australia in 1872 it was most likely carried in from England on contaminated packing straw, highlighting that even today tourists could carry the virus in from Asia on their shoes or clothing.

The 1872 Werribee outbreak was traced back to an imported shorthorn bull named Achmet, which was initially thought to have been infected in England, prior to being shipped aboard the Northumberland on December 28, 1871 to arrive in Australia two months later.

But a major review of the Werribee outbreak by the federal Department of Primary Industries in 1998 challenged this long held notion.

The DPI investigators report published in the Australian Veterinary Journal argued the incubation period for FMD is three to seven days, yet Achmet did not come down with the disease until May 5, four months after leaving England.

The findings of an 1872 Royal Commission into the outbreak and newspaper reports at the time stated that upon arrival in Australia the bull along with three others and two heifers were healthy.

At the time Achmet was taken to the property of cattle importer William McCulloch’s Darebin property and eventually exhibited at the Heidelberg Show on March 28.

The bull was then sold to the Staughton brothers, whose workers walked the bull on a three-day journey to one of their Werribee properties, run by tenant farmer Samuel Cobbledick, who immediately noticed the bull was not well on arrival on May 5.

It was during this journey that required two overnight stops, including one at Cunningham’s stables (the Deer Park Hotel), that the DPI investigators suspect Achmet picked up the FMD virus.

“The fact he (the bull) came down with frank clinical signs of disease is not consistent with him being a carrier,” the DPI team concluded. “Assuming an incubation period of three to seven days, he must have been exposed about the end of April or early May.”

“We support the hypothesis that Achmet could have been exposed to FMD virus when he spent the night (May 3) in the livery stable at Cunnigham’s Hotel, while being driven along the Ballarat and Exford roads.

“Only a valuable bull would be granted the luxury of a horse stall or loose box in a livery stable. It was common practice to unpack goods from the United Kingdom and use the straw packing as bedding for horses.”

It was quite possible that the straw had been contaminated in the country of origin due to the epidemic in the UK between 1869 and 1873. Improved sea transport times increased the likelihood of virus surviving until reaching the port of destination, and the fact that, in this case a single animal, was exposed, provides a rational argument for contaminated fomites (an object that can carry the virus) as the most likely source of infection.

Once Achmet came down with FMD the virus quickly spread to the Cobbledick’s cows and pigs and a neighbouring property.

In an account published in The Argus at the time veterinary inspectors reported Mr Cobbledick told them “four days after his (the bull’s) arrival on the farm he was noticed to be suffering from a sore mouth, so as to be incapable of eating, except when food was forced into his mouth beyond the tip of his tongue, which was somewhat raw.

“That a week after the arrival of the bull similar symptoms appeared almost simultaneously

amongst 10 out of the 11 cows depasturing in the same paddock with him (the bull).”

He also pointed out that “besides the affection of the gums and tongue, the bull and three of the cows became somewhat lame, dribbled from the mouth, and discharged matter from the nostrils, and that the cows seemed to suffer more than the bull.”

Mr Cobbledick also reported “the attack seemed to last about 10 days, and that during that period the milk of the cows was reduced about one-half or more and that “animals ceased to

graze, lay down constantly, and discontinued chewing the cud.

“At this stage they were watered with the bucket and fed by hand, with a little hay and some roots. He was of opinion that had they not been so fed one or two might have died, but that the others did not seem to be in danger.”

Mr Cobbledick’s pigs became infected after being fed milk from the cows, as well as a bull he then lent to a neighbouring tenant farmer John Bowman, which then infected his herd.

The Staughtons did not call in veterinarian Graham Mitchell until June 5, who immediately suspected FMD and called in the authorities who formed an inspection party that travelled to the properties on June 8.

The inspectors confirmed it was FMD, but still called in another three veterinarians with experience of UK infections to confirm the disease and co-ordinate destruction of the animals.

The DPI team concluded the small number of animals infected, the lack of close contact with other herds and conditions not being suitable for windborne spread meant “Australia was very fortunate that FMD did not become endemic, as occurred in South America, after its introduction in the River Plate Basin in the 1860s”.

It’s a lesson Victoria’s former chief veterinary officer Charles Milne said showed the importance of border controls to manage the risk of “inanimate objects known as fomites which include clothing and machinery” introducing the devastating livestock disease to Australia.

Dr Milne, who worked in Scotland during the UK’s 2001 FMD outbreak, said “we saw many examples ...of this route of transmission (fomites) which, after the introduction of tight animal movement controls, was responsible for the spread of disease to new areas”.

After weeks of calls from the Australian farming sector to act, Federal Agriculture Minister Murray Watt finally agreed to introduce foot baths of citric acid at airports, through which international travellers must walk upon disembarkation.