The Australian government has backed the expansion of electronic tagging to improve tracing of livestock to combat the growing threat of foot-and-mouth disease, but says it’s up to state governments to mandate it.
Murray Watt, the federal minister for agriculture, said a number of states and farming groups were yet to back the extension of mandatory electronic tracing to sheep and goats, even though it has proven to be an effective biosecurity tool in the cattle industry.
Calls for mandatory electronic tagging have been increasing since a foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) outbreak was confirmed in Indonesia in May. It’s estimated that if it reaches Australia it will cost $80bn and pull Australia from international markets for at least two years.
“It would certainly be helpful expanding it to the sheep and goat industry. And that’s something … that it is going to require much stronger collaboration and cooperation,” Watt said.
Victoria is the only state to have mandated electronic tagging for all red meat livestock. Considered the gold standard, it means the state can trace livestock with 98% accuracy in one to three days.
The remaining states track sheep and goats using visual tags. A 2020 evaluation found this system was performing below national traceability performance standards, with sheep traced at around 70% accuracy in 30 days.
Andrew Whitelaw, a commodity analyst, said a faster tracing process was needed because the longer it took to determine where the infected animals were, the longer it took to stem the spread – “exactly the same as Covid”.
Guardian Australia understands that states yet to mandate electronic tagging have partly been held back by the state farming bodies that oppose it.
WAFarmers said it didn’t support mandatory electronic tagging, while a spokesperson for the NSW Farmers Association – which has long been against mandatory tagging – said it was reconsidering its position and would put a motion forward at its annual conference next week.
Dugald Saunders, the NSW minister for agriculture, recently wrote to the federal agriculture minister, industry and key stakeholders seeking their advice on transitioning to an electronic tagging system for sheep. The Queensland minister for agriculture, Mark Furner, did not respond directly to a question about whether he supported mandatory electronic tagging, saying electronic tagging was an approved form of tracing in the state.
Jack Cresswell, a sheep grazier near Dubbo, was eager to see it mandated in NSW. He said part of the concern for farmers was cost: “Farmers just sort of see that cost and say ‘well I’m not paying $1 per sheep’, but when really it could be saving them thousands of dollars in the long run.
“I’m pretty disappointed [that it hasn’t been mandated yet] but we are a traditional industry, moving fast is not our thing. But we do need to be more proactive rather than reactive when it comes to threats like FMD.”
Bonnie Skinner, the chief executive of Sheep Producers Australia, which supports mandating electronic tagging, said this was not the first time government and industry leaders had been warned of the need to improve livestock tracing.
“There have been at least 11 reports since 2002 recommending improvement of traceability systems or the implementation of [electronic tagging’],” Skinner said. “Not all industry and government stakeholders have appreciated the risks that we face as a sector and the value of our traceability systems as a key component of the broader biosecurity continuum.”
In 2020, SAFEMEAT – a partnership between industry and government on meat safety systems - delivered a report to the National Biosecurity System with recommendations to improve the traceability of livestock in Australia.
Two years later, these recommendations are still under consideration.
The leader of the Nationals, David Littleproud, has criticised the new Labor government for leaving Australia “vulnerable” to the threat of FMD. But Watt said under the Coalition biosecurity was underresourced and “patchy”.
“David Littleproud’s comments are totally hypocritical given they’re from someone who was part of a government for nine years and had every opportunity to make continued improvements to our biosecurity system,” he said. “There’s no doubt that the underresourcing we saw from the former government did place our systems at risk.”
In 2017, the then agriculture minister Barnaby Joyce commissioned a review into Australia’s biosecurity systems which found the threat of pests and diseases spreading in Australia had increased, and efforts to stem the risks were hampered by underfunding, a decline in expertise, turnover of staff, a lack of codified practices, and patchy coverage by institutions.
Five years later, only around half of the recommendations have been implemented.
Littleproud, said the Coalition still made record investment in biosecurity while in power, investing $590m in new funding measures in the past 18 months, and increased investment towards biosecurity by 78% from 2014-22 to an expected total of over $1.2bn.
He said the Coalition created the National Biosecurity Strategy, which involved the industry and state and territory governments.
That strategy, alongside the agriculture ministerial meetings, was part of the effort to better align and improve biosecurity systems. But Watt said territory and state governments had suggested that the meetings “fell apart” under Littleproud’s ministership.
Queensland minister for agriculture Mark Furner told Guardian Australia he agreed.
“Former federal minister David Littleproud was more interested in political attacks than in supporting our farmers, and repeatedly restricted opportunities for states and the federal government to work together through forums.”
Watt said his focus would be on consulting and collaborating industry and state and territory governments to improve Australia’s biosecurity.
“I do believe that Australia has one of the world’s leading biosecurity systems in place. And I don’t want to alarm people just for the sake of scoring a few political points against the previous government. But what I think is that it could have been done even better.”
