And with Australians returning to the Indonesian getaway in growing numbers (there were 128,421 Australian arrivals in Denpasar in June alone), the worry is that a tourist could unwittingly take the disease home with them or other items such as animal products, dealing a potential $80 billion hit to the economy.
In Bali, as in the rest of Indonesia, authorities aim to stem the tide with a vaccination rollout rather than the mass slaughter that Britain carried out in 2001, where 6.5 million cows were slaughtered, sheep and pigs to combat a devastating outbreak there. .
A cattle truck is sprayed with disinfectant at the port of Lembar, West Lombok, in the province directly east of Bali.
The provincial government reacted to the detection of foot-and-mouth disease on the island on July 1 by temporarily closing animal markets and restricting the transport of cattle and other livestock between local government regencies. Animals or products susceptible to the disease from other provinces were not allowed to enter Bali due to its status as the host of this year’s G20, according to Professor Wiku Adisasmito, spokesman for the working group of the newly created foot-and-mouth disease in Indonesia.
But amid shortages of vaccines and staff to administer them to Indonesia’s 18 million cattle and other livestock, Australia’s northern neighbor faces a momentous challenge in controlling the disease.
“The governments of Indonesia and Bali understand the need to revive tourism. They will do everything they can to try to deal with the outbreak, but it will not be easy,” said Wilantara, the hobby farmer and hotel owner in Kuta, whose 10 cattle were vaccinated shortly after it became known that the virus had reached Bali.
“In the culture here, as people in rural Bali keep cows next to their houses, it would be impossible to disinfect or keep their cows. [farming] separate teams from their daily activities. It’s just not practical.
“For example, with the cattle lock and cattle market closure, there would be no way for the local government to monitor individual sales, individual slaughter and transactions between private owners. We don’t have large farms with thousands of cattle. Many individuals only have one cow.”
Beringkit Cattle Market, the largest in Bali, has been closed during the FMD epidemic. Credit: Amilia Rosa
The bid to eradicate the disease in Bali has also been complicated by problems related to compensation offered to farmers for culling infected animals.
Indonesia is carrying out “conditional slaughter” rather than the UK approach because, like most developing countries, it is not in a position to compensate landowners for the extermination of their herds. It means that infected animals are destroyed if there are only a few with FMD in a given location while others are given medicine. As of Friday, 4,649 have been shot down across the country.
Indonesia announced that farmers would be paid 10 million rupiah ($962) for each head of cattle slaughtered, but in Bali, farmers have reportedly stopped killing animals until they are sure they will get the money.
North Bali farmer Kadek Ardika with the infected cow he is trying to slaughter.
In Gerokgak, north Bali, farmer Kadek Ardika believed his 10 cattle were the first in his area to be infected, he suspected, from a young cow he bought in Celukan Bawang, where the main port is from the north of Bali.
“All 10 got sick and all but one of them have recovered,” he said. “He is now about eight months old and his neck is not healing, it is crooked. He was scheduled to be slaughtered today, but when the men came they said he was too young and refused to do it.
“He’s alive, he’s eating and drinking, but I’m still trying to get him euthanized, that way I can get compensation for it. I heard the compensation could be paid in October. I’m not sure if that’s true or not , but they said we’ll get it this year.”
In the same village, I Putu Wibawa operates a farming group with 20 members. They sold most of the few dozen cattle they had to buyers in Jakarta in late June, when Bali was still free of foot and mouth disease.
Passengers arriving from Denpasar in Bali on Thursday. Australia is concerned a large outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease in Indonesia could spread here. Credit: Peter Rae
The remaining two cows in the group are healthy but “without government help,” he said.
“We bought the medicine [to treat foot and mouth] ourselves We disinfected our cows with our own money,” he said. “They knew there was an outbreak, they could have anticipated it and they have helped us with vaccines, medicine and disinfectants. If my cows were sick, I would take them myself to the slaughterhouse and try my luck there.”
As farmers seek financial relief, butchers in northern Bali were summoned to a meeting with government representatives at a slaughterhouse this week and asked to negotiate with livestock owners over prices for meat from sick animals.
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Meat from cattle with FMD, which is safe for humans, can still be sold and processed on the island as long as it is cooked to a temperature of at least 70 degrees. The head, feet, internal organs and skin must not be sold and must be buried or boiled for at least 30 minutes, according to a local government directive. The containers that carry the meat should also be soaked in detergent, bleach or vinegar.
“The highest price is 8 million rupiah, but it is up to us to negotiate the prices according to the condition and size of the cow,” said Haji Amir Mahfud, a butcher from Buleleng who was at the meeting.
There is at least one theory about how foot-and-mouth disease came to Indonesia.
Local news Kompas reported last week that the illegal purchase of 14 goats from Thailand by a trader in Wonosobo, Central Java, in February was believed to be the source of the re-entry of the virus. The goats were transported by boat from Thailand, where foot-and-mouth disease is endemic, to the Indonesian province of Aceh and Sumatra and Java, according to the report.
This has not been confirmed by President Joko Widodo’s government, whose agriculture ministry has said it is still investigating the source of the outbreak.
Vaccinated cattle at Made Purba Wilantara’s farm in Kubu Anyar village in Kuta. Credit: Amilia Rosa
For now, he has his hands full trying to remove it.
Leading the charge is former military commander Major General Suharyanto, who heads Indonesia’s National Disaster Mitigation Agency (BNPB) and has also headed the country’s COVID task force.
Now, the head of the foot-and-mouth disease response team, met with Agriculture Minister Murray Watt in Jakarta last week and has assured Australia that “there is no need to worry because Indonesia is seriously handling the illness”.
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He told The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age Indonesia that they hoped to reduce infections significantly over the next six months and had introduced biosecurity rules, including spraying carpets at airport entrances with disinfectant and vehicles traveling in and off the farms
At Ngurah Rai Airport in Denpasar, however, there has been no change in protocols, according to general manager Hendy Heryudhtiawan.
“To date, we have not received or received requests for additional protocol to prevent the spread of FMD,” he said.
Professor Peter Windsor, an FMD control expert at the University of Sydney who worked closely with the Philippines in its fight against the disease, has just returned from Java and says the lack of public awareness in Indonesia is worrying.
“There are more posters about foot-and-mouth disease coming into Sydney, at the airport, than in the whole of Indonesia at the moment,” he said.
He believes the scale of the problem in Indonesia is immense and could go on for years.
“Ground-level resources are inadequate because they are not used to dealing with the level of biosecurity that is required to stop the spread of the disease,” he said.
“From what I’ve found in talking to a lot of people, they’re overwhelmed. They are not on top of it. In fact, they are very far from it.”