“I don’t think we should close the borders, increasing the layers of biosecurity protection at our own borders is the best way forward.”
Australian Meat Industry Council chief executive Patrick Hutchinson said Australia should not “absolutely close the border” to Indonesia and “cooler heads must prevail”.
“The key thing I tell people who want a ban is when was the last global outbreak caused by poo in the boot [of travellers returning from Bali]?” he said
“Remember that it has to enter the livestock food chain and then be consumed by an animal with cloven hooves. What would be high risk and high probability is contraband meat products that contain the FMD virus. Here is where we need to focus, with sniffer dogs and more surveillance of meat products coming in, not just from Indonesia but from anywhere. [the disease] it is endemic”.
National Farmers’ Federation president Fiona Simson said closing the border with Indonesia would not reduce the risk of the disease from one of the many other countries where it was present, while it would harm farmers who depend on trade with Indonesia.
“Closing the borders would not completely eliminate the risk and would damage the trade relationship to the point where it could do more harm than good,” Simson said.
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Simson said mandatory shoe cleaning at airports should have been implemented when the outbreak was identified in early May, but was glad it was now in place and called on holidaymakers returning from Bali to clean all the dirt from the shoes and offer them a chemical treatment. .
New airport biosecurity measures introduced on Friday require travelers to clean their shoes and walk on sanitation mats when returning to Australia from Indonesia.
Those measures were not yet in place at Melbourne Airport on Sunday. A spokesman for the Department of Agriculture said the shoe mats were “undergoing trials” at major airports and the department “will need support from the airports to put them in place”.
“Our biosecurity controls are based on a multi-layered approach to mitigating the risk of FMD, including passenger declaration, 100% profiling of all passengers entering from Indonesia, real-time risk assessments , interrogations and shoe shine”.
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Screening all passengers arriving from Indonesia, almost 3,700 travelers were screened “more intensively” at Melbourne Airport alone on Saturday, the department said.
Rates for undeclared risk items were “down dramatically” from last week, a spokesman for Agriculture Minister Murray Watt said.
Bill Farmer, Australia’s longest-serving ambassador to Indonesia, said it was crucial for the Australian government to work closely with the Indonesian government, building on the recent visit of Agriculture Minister Murray Watt.
“In 2011 we made a fundamental mistake of cutting off the export of live cattle without proper consultation with Indonesia. Their foreign minister at the time [Marty Natalegawa] made it clear that a few hours was not an appropriate consultation. We have a long-term interest in Indonesia,” he said.
Australia-Indonesia Business Council president Jennifer Mathews, who also served as an Australian diplomat in Indonesia, warned that “if the government closed the border it would put at risk live cattle exports, which make a significant contribution to our bilateral trade relations with Indonesia”.
“This is an important and risky issue, but we call for a measured and sensible approach to the situation,” he said, praising the Albanian government’s response so far.
“We have to learn from what we have done in the past. We have seen a great support package in Indonesia in terms of capacity building and vaccines. They will remember that.”
A $14 million assistance package has been launched to prevent foot-and-mouth disease from entering Australia from Bali or other parts of Indonesia.