Australia is one of the few countries in the fortunate position of having no other countries connected to it by land. So keeping foreign pests and diseases out should be a piece of cake, compared to the majority of other countries which have the infinitely more difficult job of monitoring massive quantities of road traffic, not just air and sea traffic.
However while the world is run by human beings there will be human stuff-ups. It is sheer fairyland stupidity to believe otherwise (unfortunately). These stuff-ups are sometimes due to sheer laziness or complacency, but the majority are due to sheer greed and selfishness – and an inability to see any further than their own nose. For example, the stud sheep or cattle breeder who sneaks in a few vials for A.I. purposes and the horticulturalist who brings in a few seeds or root stock – illegally – because they believe strict quarantine laws are costing them time and/or money ‘and a little bit won’t hurt’, ‘nothing can possibly go wrong’, ‘I’ll be careful’, and ‘I’ll never get caught’. In other words, they have only thought about themselves and today, not any potential problems – such as risking the long-term viability of the entire industry they work in, the viability of other people’s livelihoods, or the potential devastation of plants and animals in Australia. Pegging out on a meat ant’s nest is too good for such people.
Ovine Johne’s Disease
Ovine Johne’s Diseaseis pronounced Ovine ‘Yoneys’. It was first identified in New Zealand in 1952 however it was not identified in Australia until 1981, in central NSW. Presumably it arrived here with infected sheep imported from New Zealand. Given that NZ had identified OJD nearly 30 years earlier, there absolutely no excuse for importers and AQIS being unaware of the risk.
It’s a classic example of a disease that should never have arrived in Australia, ever.
OJD causes infected sheep to effectively starve to death; it is not treatable let alone curable, and vaccination is expensive but not even 100% effective. Because there can be an unusually long lead-time between infection and symptoms appearing, it spreads insidiously through a flock and throughout a region. Stick injuries to operators while vaccinating, can lead to nasty spreading lesions that can only be treated by cutting them out. OJD is a classic example of a disease that is cruel, virtually impossible to eradicate, and squanders massive amounts of money, from now until the foreseeable future (until vaccination ever becomes 100% effective). OJD is still spreading through sheep flocks in temperate southern regions – it seems to be largely dormant during drought years, but picks up during wetter periods.
Australian sheep should never have been exposed to OJD. It would have been so easy to prevent it getting into the country in the first place.
Bovine Tuberculosis & Bovine Brucellosis
In 1970 Australia embarked on the most amazing animal disease eradication programme ever, to rid Australian cattle herds of Brucellosis and Tuberculosis. These two diseases are ‘zoonoses’ – diseases that are carried by animals but which can be passed on to humans (and make them very sick). Leptospirosis is another problematic zoonosis prevalent in the wetter areas of Australia. ‘Lepto’ is carried by rats in sugar cane fields and banana plantations, as well as carried by cattle and feral pigs.
‘BTEC’ (the Brucellosis and Tuberculosis Eradication Campaign) cost State and Federal Governments and producer organisations an estimated cost of $850,000,000. And the cost of BTEC could not be borne by some cattle producers, who went broke and left the cattle industry forever. BTEC required huge investment in extra and upgraded fencing and yards and extra stock watering facilities, and it virtually doubled the amount of manpower required on many cattle stations, due to the extra mustering required at specific times, to ensure BTEC testing was done properly. Cattle in harder country and during poorer seasons suffered especially towards the end of the dry season when they had to be mustered just for BTEC testing, and many calves would have been lost as an indirect result. So the amount that BTEC cost cattle producers is impossible to quantify accurately, suffice to say that the cost was absolutely massive – many hundreds of millions of dollars more than the government compensation.
Any manager that ran one of the bigger cattle stations effectively, during BTEC, could run a cattle station under normal operating circumstances, standing on their ear. The first two decades of the BTEC scheme sorted out the sheep from the goats when it came to station managers.
Bovine Brucellosis was the easier of the two diseases to eradicate – it had been officially cleared up by 1989. Bovine Tuberculosis was more difficult to beat – animals can carry it for years without showing any symptoms at all, and it took another eight years for Australia to be officially declared free of Bovine Tuberculosis (1997). There have been several cases detected since, however these have been rare and isolated cases.
The continuing absence of Bovine Tuberculosis must be monitored conscientiously and permanently, (primarily by inspecting meat carcases passing through abattoirs) because it would be utterly stupid to become complacent and risk the return and unmonitored spread of Bovine TB in herds, squandering several decades of work and such a vast quantity of effort and money eradicating it. It is highly unlikely that the Federal and State Governments would have the fortitude to embark on a scheme such as BTEC, ever again, and the eventual success of the BTEC programme is a credit to all the station workers, vets and DPI stock inspectors involved.
Equine Influenza
You would think, after the OJD experience and subsequent loss of invaluable sheep genetics through the mass destruction of whole sheep flocks, in what turned out to be an ineffectual though well-intentioned effort to eradicate OJD, and the massive amount of money spent on BTEC, that Australian Quarantine regulations and implementation would have been overhauled and tightened up to prevent the arrival of any other diseases that are not currently in Australia.
Alas, no.
In mid 2007 someone brought a horse – or horses – from Japan to Australia, that carried equine influenza (E.I.). The horse racing industry can afford to vaccinate – and even claim it as a tax deduction – and receive government assistance to boot. However many families who lived in the worst affected areas and who owned kids ponies, could simply not afford to take on any extra expenses, so recreational horse ownership plunged. After a massive amount of money and effort, E.I. may have been finally and officially eradicated by the end of 2008. Unfortunately those responsible for the importation and spread of the disease have not been identified, so remain unpunished. Justice Callinanhad some precise criticism regarding what happened at Eastern Creek Quarantine Station. It sounds like it was a quarantine station that wasn’t being run like a quarantine station, more like a dodgy chook raffle.
Information on bringing dogs, cats, horses, honeybees and all other animals and insects into Australia is found at AQIS (Australian Quarantine Inspection Service) which comes under the umbrella of DAFFA (The Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry). AQIS also controls the importation of all plant and grain material.
Coastwatchis a branch of the Australian Customs Service, that is responsible for surveillance of the Australian coastline (primarily by air). Coastwatch works closely with AQIS, the Australian Federal Police (AFP), the Department of Immigration and the Department of Defence.
National Pests and Disease Outbreaks is a Federal Government website that provides completely up-to-date, practical information on outbreaks of plant and animal pests and diseases that are exotic (imported) and considered eradicable. (Imported plant and animal pests and diseases considered endemic, and for which there are no eradication plans, are not mentioned.)
Animal Health Australia is a not-for-profit organisation set up by the Federal and State Governments, with many member organisations, to help prevent new disease outbreaks and eradicate or at least manage other disease problems.
Ausvet Animal Health Serviceshas an excellent list of links to health/disease sites, statistic and scientific sites. Plus information on BOSSS (Bovine Syndromic Surveillance System) – a web-based cattle disease surveillance system, developed through the ABCRC (Australian Biosecurity Co-operative Research Centre).
The World Organisation for Animal Health(OiO) lists the world’s most problematic animal diseases in English, French and Spanish, and it lists an impressive list of member countries. A quick scan down the list is a reminder of how few of these serious animal diseases we have in Australia.
The Pests and Diseases Image Library contains excellent quality images of pests and diseases, for accurate identification purposes. Every Australian should be aware of this website, which enables users to quickly and easily check out anything odd that comes their way. Using the comparative tables makes what can be a difficult identification job, much easier.
Ultimately, the general public are the key to preventing outbreaks of pests and diseases, by reporting any outbreaks of anything odd that they’ve spotted, and sticking rigidly to disease and pest control guidelines (it has been said that EI would have been eradicated much faster and much more quickly if there had not been some people who did the wrong thing. Of course it wouldn’t have got here in the first place if certain people had sufficient respect for quarantine, also.) Infestations of Crazy Antswere detected in Townsville and became subject to a DPI eradication plan simply because a member of the public took the time and trouble to report ants he noticed exhibiting unusual behaviour.
Every single one of us would have a specific reason why the prevention of the importation of pests and diseases would be important to us. It may be only because it would affect our pet dog, cat, bird or horse. Or our children’s welfare. Or it might be because we care about the effect on the natural environment (eg the potential for extensive suffering or even extinction of some of our unique species), or it might be because it would affect the food available for us to eat, or because we care about the effect on our personal finances (imported pests and diseases are hugely expensive to manage or eradicate, and have the potential to decimate our economy due to lost production). Ideally effective quarantine would be important to us all, for all these reasons.
Apart from encouraging everyone to do the right thing, the general public need to keep the pressure up on all levels of government, to ensure that our quarantine services are adequately funded and staffed, and well run. It’s probably the single most important issue in Australia, but it only gets attention when something goes badly wrong – when it’s too late.
Tags: Australian quarantine and biosecurity, Conservation and the environment