The federal government will install acidic disinfectant mats at airports as part of an expanded suite of biosecurity measures to prevent foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) entering Australia from Indonesia.
The new precautions come as viral fragments of the disease were detected in food products arriving from China.
Viral fragments of foot-and-mouth disease and African swine fever were detected in pork products at a Melbourne retailer.
It’s the first time viral fragments have been detected in a retail setting, the federal agriculture minister, Murray Watt, said.
“This is not the first time in Australian history that we have picked up foot-and-mouth disease viral fragments in meat products - it’s happened a number of other times in airport settings,” he told reporters in Brisbane.
“I want to assure people that our systems have worked, we have monitored this, we have undertaken surveillance operations and these products have been found, tested and now seized.”
Further investigations about how the products entered Australia was being taken and it was likely prosecutions would occur, Watt said.
The new mats will be charged with a citric acid solution designed to dislodge dirt from the sole of the shoe and cover it in the acid, installed this week at Darwin and Cairns airports before a wider rollout, Watt said.
“These sanitation mats will be a physical reminder to passengers to do the right thing to limit any spread of FMD, and will be used in conjunction with our current measures, such as passenger declaration, 100% profiling of all passengers entering from Indonesia, real time risk assessments, questioning and shoe cleaning,” Watt said on Wednesday.
Watt’s announcement came after widespread pressure from Australia’s farming sector, including one cattle farmer who returned from an Indonesian holiday last week, saying he was “terrified” by the lack of biosecurity measures at airports to stem the risk of FMD reaching Australia.
Grazier Mick Wettenhall, from the New South Wales central west, aired his concerns on social media, posting a video of cows grazing in a field “500 metres from the heart of Seminyak”, a busy tourist destination in Bali.
He wrote that merely asking returning travellers to declare if they’ve been near a farm for the past seven days was “ludicrous” given livestock can often be seen in close proximity to public places.
“Our [government] needs to assume if you have been to Bali – you have been to a farm,” he wrote. “You don’t have to go to the rural areas to come across livestock.
“We literally watched the vast majority of our planeload of people pick up their bags off the carousel and walk out on to the street having followed the current protocol … It made me feel sick.”
‘Lost in the conversation’
FMD has been spreading in Bali since May. If an animal is found to be infected with the disease in Australia, it could shut off the livestock industry from international markets for years and estimates are it would likely cost Australia’s economy $80bn.
On Friday, the federal government committed $14m in immediate funding to manage the increased threat of FMD. This includes $9m domestically for increased surveillance, biosecurity personnel, and education for travellers, while $5m was committed to reducing the spread of FMD in Indonesia, including the distribution of FMD vaccines.
Both the National party and the National Farmers’ Federation were advocating for shoe disinfectant stations at airports.
But according to Aaron Dodd, an expert in biosecurity at the University of Melbourne, there are a large number of additional biosecurity controls that have been put in place in Indonesia, at Australia’s borders, and onshore that he fears are getting lost in the conversation.
“It’s completely justifiable that people are concerned. It’s a horrible virus that would lead to significant impact, but there are a wide range of measures in place that just aren’t particularly visible to the community,” he said.
Dodd says the risk of the virus spreading through meat and dairy products brought into Australia from an FMD-infected country is a higher risk than it spreading via clothes and shoes.
“There have been extra detector dogs put in airports that didn’t have them earlier, so that picks up the pork or beef sausage, for example, that would have previously gone undetected,” he said.
“Based on research, putting those measures in place are more effective than doing foot baths, even though it seems like the obvious thing to do.”
The leader of the National party, David Littleproud, told Guardian Australia he is calling for all returning passengers from Indonesia to undergo screening.
“It may be an inconvenience but no cost should be spared to protect us from FMD. All it takes is one case to get through,” he said.
A spokesperson from the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry said all passengers and crew are assessed against biosecurity profiles at time of arrival.
“Once inside the terminal, passengers and crew are risk assessed by trained biosecurity officers, and may be required to undergo further screening by detector dogs, or X-ray and baggage inspection,” they said.
“High-risk flights are being targeted for FMD risk materials, such as meat and dairy products and contaminated footwear. These flights are subject to biosecurity screening of all passengers and crew.”
‘Do we ban flights?’
Widespread calls for a ban on non-essential travel between Australia and Indonesia have circulated since the news of FMD reaching one of Australia’s closest geographic neighbours.
But on his recent return from Indonesia, Watt rejected calls for quarantine and border closures.
Andrew Whitelaw, an agricultural market analyst, has looked at data from countries that also experienced recent FMD outbreaks and found they had occurred in popular tourist destinations such as Thailand and South Africa.
“Do we ban flights from all these countries?” he wrote on agricultural commodities website Thomas Elder Markets.
“The world is teeming with exotic diseases – Germany has African Swine Fever.
“Should we ban flights from Europe? How long do we close the border with Indonesia – weeks, months or years?”
Watt’s office indicated more biosecurity measures will be discussed at Wednesday’s joint agriculture ministers’ meeting – the first between federal, state and territory agriculture ministers this year.
with Australian Associated Press
