Foot-and-mouth disease travel risk and simple biosecurity tips | Ep. 130
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Kia ora and welcome to Talking Dairy. I'm Jack McGowan. Before someone steps onto your farm after travelling overseas, what do you ask them? It's a simple but important question right now. With the All Blacks heading to South Africa and with a foot and mouth disease outbreak happening there, overseas travel and farm biosecurity are front of mind for many of us. New Zealand doesn't have foot and mouth disease and we want to keep it that way. So today we're talking about foot and mouth disease readiness, why it matters, what's being done behind the scenes to get ready and what you can do now to help protect your animals and your business. August is Biosecurity Month, so it's a good time to check the basics.
And joining me are two people right at the centre of this work, Fi Roberts and Mitch Cooper. They've got useful insights to share, along with some simple things you can do now to reduce risk on your farm. Kia ora Fi and Mitch, great to have you with us. Great to be here. Great to be here, Jay.
Why is foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) a top biosecurity concern for New Zealand right now?
We've had you both on before, but let's start with quick intros. Who are you? What's your role?
What do you do? So my name is Fi Roberts. I'm head of biosecurity at DairyNZ. I've been in this role around two and a half, nearly three years now. And I come from a UK dairy farming background. And originally in 2002, I was working during the FMD response in the UK, which has sort of struck a passion for this work.
So some unfortunate skin in this game, Mitch.
Kia ora, my name's Mitch Cooper. I'm a Senior Technical and Policy Advisor for Biosecurity for Daring Z. I was a clinical dairy vet just over a decade in the Waikato before moving into a role where I inform a lot of our biosecurity materials and policy.
New Zealand doesn't have foot and mouth disease, but why is it something that we need to keep on our radar?
Yeah, 100%. It does not have foot and mouth disease, and we never have had foot and mouth disease in New Zealand, and that's exactly why. It's worth keeping on our radar. It's a disease that travels extremely quickly between cloven-hooved animals, and that includes cattle, sheep, pigs, deer, and goats. An outbreak in New Zealand is going to trigger an immediate halt to international trade markets, which is going to affect dairy, meat and other primary sector exports. The economic impact is going to be huge, right? So consequences would be felt right across rural communities and the wider economy. We've done a little bit of impact assessments in terms of the economic impact assessment. Some work suggests that it could cost up to $3 billion to actually eradicate FMD.
The readiness work we're doing is going to significantly bring that cost down. That's the plan. But also in terms of our export values, the estimate is that it could be up to $14 billion per year until we can get back to trade. So either way, huge economic consequence. The main thing that we want to do is, again, prevention is cheaper than dealing with the outbreak after it arrives. So doing all this readiness work will bring down that cost to eradicate the disease. But we also want to get on top of it quickly. I think that's the main thing that we need to do in the event of FMD. It's because if we're prepared, if we can jump into action quickly, we can continue to trade, hopefully. We're trying to get those settings right so that that trade could continue, particularly in the dairy sector.
Ultimately, good biosecurity is like insurance. You hope you never need it, but you're glad that it's there when you do.
Mitch, if foot and mouth disease arrived on a dairy farm tomorrow, what would farmers actually see and what would it mean for their animals and their team and their business?
A couple of levels there. So if you had it in your animals, it's quite a nasty disease. Foot and mouth disease is named quite accurately because the primary lesions are in the feet and on the hooves. And so what you normally see is vesicles or blisters that rupture in sort of several areas of the mouth. and feet between the toes and along the edge between where the wall meets, the hoof wall meets the skin.
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Chapters
4 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:01–1:01
2
Why is foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) a top biosecurity concern for New Zealand right now?
1:01–4:45
3
Who are the experts on this episode and what are their biosecurity roles?
4:45–22:33
4
What would FMD look like on a dairy farm and how quickly does it spread?
22:33–31:35
Speakers
3 identifiedMore from Talking Dairy
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