Foot & Mouth Disease: the real cost.
The spread of Foot and Mouth Disease in Indonesia poses one of the greatest threats to the Australian livestock industry in many years, and is being spoken of in purely economic terms. It’s time we looked beyond the numbers and bear witness to the real cost.
In the Winter of 2021 four lambs entered my home and changed my life forever. Despite promises made to my ever patient husband these four remain with us, now much older but still as demanding and beloved as when they were little. It took hours of dedicated effort and thousands of dollars to bring all four safely through their various ailments, to become the healthy juveniles they are today.
But there are clouds on the horizon, and I am unsure what awaits us.
An outbreak of Foot and Mouth Disease (FMD) in Indonesia threatens to spread into Australia, where there have been no cases of FMD since 1872. It has been said to be a high probability that FMD will arrive within the next one to six months. FMD is highly contagious, transmitted via airborne particles, saliva, milk, and fecal matter. It can also be carried on the shoes and clothes of people who have visited infected farms. But the greatest risk of introduction into Australia is via infected animal products such as processed meats, if they are imported into the country and fed to other animals, introducing FMD into the animal feed cycle. It infects hoofed animals such as cows, sheep, goats, and deer, with pigs able to transmit 3000 times more of the virus into the environment than ruminants.
If FMD reaches Australia it could cost the animal exploitation industry $80 billion over the next ten years, and decimate the $27 billion live export trade. Many producers and exporters will go bust, including stud breeders, dairy farmers, feedlots, and some shipping companies; red meat, milk, leather, wool, and other associated products would become scarce and prohibitively expensive. For this reason, FMD does seem to have something of a silver lining; the animal industrial complex may never recover should it cross the border.
But the reason some in these industries would go bust is that a mass slaughter would occur across the country to prevent the disease from spreading. Vaccines are limited, and though adult animal usually survive the disease younger animals often die. With a national cattle herd of 28 million individuals and a sheep herd of 75 million individuals, an expanding feedlot industry and the prevalence of intensive farming practices, culling would be widespread and inevitable.
In 2001 FMD swept across the UK, resulting in the slaughter of millions of sheep and cows. The bodies were disposed of on vast funeral pyres which burned throughout the seven month epidemic. These were, of course, animals who were destined for slaughter eventually, to the profit of their exploiters. FMD deprived these people of the ability to profit from those deaths. But to those individuals burned upon the pyres, there really was no difference. But at least there was a momentary disruption to the cycle of breeding, slaughter, and profit.
I asked on my Instagram page for peoples perceptions, whether a disruption to the animal industrial complex resulting in mass slaughter was worth it in the longer term. That is to say, whether mass deaths from FMD causing the decimation of industry and potentially eliminating the breeding of billions more animals into the future could be viewed through a positive lens. It is a question to which there is no right or wrong answer; the issue is nuanced and complex.
The responses, however, surprised me: none were in the affirmative, despite widespread commentary I have seen across social media to the contrary. Obviously ending these industries was of paramount importance. But as one respondent said, under the current system of government bailouts for private enterprise, it is impossible to predict the total collapse of the animal industrial complex due to FMD. Then there is the question of worker exploitation during an epidemic of FMD. As another respondent stated: “It will result in mass slaughter and body burnings which underprivileged workers will have to do and risk their health.” We certainly would not be seeing Twiggy Forrest, Gina Reinhardt or any of the other cattle ranching billionaires standing by the pyres of burning corpses, getting their own hands dirty. They would instead be safely ensconced in comfortable offices far from the smoke and ash, counting their financial losses.
And as FMD rages through the feedlots and pig farms, the funeral pyres will inevitably burn their way into sanctuaries and the homes of people who live with these animals as companions. The vaccines for FMD are in limited supply; those who live with animals but do not contribute to the economy through their exploitation would not be given priority. Because, as the current discourse relating to the threat of FMD has shown, the economy is the most important issue here. And as government mandated culling is implemented as a control measure, the sounds of gunshot will sound across places which were formerly refuges and safe havens. We have already seen this occur in the UK, due to the mandated slaughter of any animals who are merely suspected of being infected with tuberculosis.
Should FMD arrive in Australia, the babies whom I fought so hard for I may eventually be expected to destroy.
It becomes something of a trolley problem. FMD could prevent the breeding, exploitation, and eventual slaughter of billions of animals into the future. It could drive companies into the dirt, destroy corporations, entirely disrupt the animal industrial complex in Australia. the live export industry, which we have fought so long and hard against, would be decimated. But at the same time, I might find myself having to hold a gun to my own Ivar’s head. Sanctuaries would cease to be sanctuaries for many individuals, rather they would become vast graveyards. Are those lives lost less valuable than those created and taken in the future? Who deserves to live more? Who deserves to die?
I won’t mourn industries and corporations should FMD prove fatal to their business models. But I will mourn the millions upon millions of lives who will be lost to this virus.
The Australian Federal Government has committed an additional $14 million to bolster defence against the importation of FMD, which will also be used to combat an outbreak of bovine lumpy skin disease in Timor Leste and Papua New Guinea. Billions of dollars have already been spent over the years in research and development of biosecurity policies and strategies. As demand for animal proteins increases, so too will the necessity for such government expenditure. In recent years the country has seen various outbreaks of highly contagious Avian Influenza (transmissible to humans), resulting in the mass culling of farmed birds and the establishment of quarantine zones restricting the movement of birds including backyard hens. A Japanese Encephalitis outbreak (which is potentially lethal to humans) is still ongoing amongst farmed and wild pig populations. And African Swine Fever still threatens to enter the country. Over 60% of currently known infectious diseases in humans can be transmitted via nonhuman animals, and over 75% of new and emerging infectious diseases in humans originate in nonhuman animals. The prevalence of these diseases is increased by the dysfunctional relationship humans have with nonhuman animals and the natural world, including intensive farming and habitat destruction.
This is the current state of play. FMD is a symptom of something far greater and far more dangerous than we are ready to accept. Our exploitation of nonhuman animals is not simply killing them; it also poses an existential threat for our own species. We have already seen the impact on global human populations that have arisen through the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, which has killed almost 6.4 million people in under two years, disrupted entire communities, and damaged global economies. The next pandemic is predicted to arise through a mutated avian influenza, likely H5N1 or H9N9, should a spillover event occur. Contributing factors will include the intensive farming of birds such as chickens and turkeys; in Australia, chicken farming has increased by more than 300 million birds slaughtered per annum in the past twenty years; such increases in numbers will continue into the future and put us all at grave risk.
There is little to no point in spending billions of dollars on biosecurity research and innovation if the very core of the issue is not addressed. The expansion of intensive farming industries and the continued destruction of the natural world guarantee that those dollars become nothing more than a band-aid on a bullet wound. Nothing short of a radical reimagining of our relationship with nonhuman animals and the natural world will prevent the continued rise and spread of zoonotic diseases. If climate change doesn’t kill us first, perhaps an avian influenza pandemic will.
And yet I cannot find it in my heart to bemoan an extra $14 million to keep FMD from our shores. Because I do not wish to face a future where funeral pyres replace sanctuaries and we are forced become the killers of the very lives we have tried so hard to save.
For further information on FMD signs and prevention visit the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry.
