No need to fear Aussie meat over anthrax, official says
No need to fear Aussie meat over anthrax, official says
SYDNEY, Australia (AP): Indonesia was too hasty in banning beef and cattle imports from Australia because of anthrax as any outbreaks were under control, New South Wales' state Agriculture Department said yesterday.
Indonesia halted imports from New South Wales and Victoria on March 10, citing anthrax disease in cattle in both states. Asian food buyers are particularly sensitive since Britain has been rocked by the "mad cow disease" scare.
But the head of the New South Wales Agriculture Department's animal industries division, Helen Scott-Orr, said New South Wales should not be included in the ban as reports of anthrax were normal and decreasing.
"In fact, our incidence this year has been on the lower side of what our normal incidence has been," she told Australian Broadcasting Corp. radio.
"So it's not as if there's any greater risk whatsoever to the Indonesians than there was in the past.
"Each year we would have anywhere between five and 20 outbreaks but essentially they have been diminishing each year.
"Obviously (Indonesia) feels because of the high incidence in Victoria, it has aroused their awareness and they have looked to see where anthrax occurred in Australia and they have thrown the net rather wider than we think necessary."
From January through March some 150 cattle died on Victoria farms before anthrax was contained through quarantines and inoculation.
More than 80 Victoria farms lost cattle to the disease and more than 77,300 heads of cattle were vaccinated.
There had been outbreaks of the disease on six isolated New South Wales farms this year, Scott-Orr said.
Anthrax is a highly infectious cattle disease that leads to ulcerating nodules, lesions in the lungs and blood poisoning. It can also be transmitted to humans handling the infected products.
The Sydney Morning Herald reported yesterday that Australia's US$2.7 billion (A$3.5 billion) red meat and livestock export industries are worried about a possible loss of access to lucrative Asian markets after an apparent breakdown between government agencies in reporting recent anthrax infections in New South Wales.
The Herald said Federal Primary Industries Minister John Anderson had spearheaded efforts to satisfy concerns on the part of Australia's major trading partners over Australia's anthrax quarantine effectiveness after the recent outbreak in Victoria.
A spokesman for Anderson told the paper that Australia always notified its trading partners of any anthrax outbreak, but so far there had been no contact about New South Wales infections.