27: Foot & Mouth Disease In 75 Seconds

Foot & Mouth Disease in 75 Seconds

To keep foot and mouth disease out of Australia, many are calling for the border with Bali to be closed, allowing time for their cattle to be vaccinated.

$80 bn is the economic damage bill experts keep repeating, if foot and mouth disease gets into Australia. It reflects a catastrophic, ‘total loss’ situation, where all our livestock industries are wiped out for a number of years.

Thats just not going to happen.

We have the worlds best livestock tracing system to contain any outbreak and keep it minimal.

However, just one case of foot and mouth, and world protocols kick in, meaning a one year export ban on all our meat.

Initially supermarket shelves would overflow with the meat usually exported.

Australian meat prices would plummet with the huge excess supply of meat.

But the price of meat in the rest of the world would skyrocket with the decrease in Australian exports.

Its a classic economics 101 supply and demand story.

Indonesia and China, which both have foot and mouth, are reliant on our meat exports for their populations protein. They would quickly renegotiate the protocols allowing for our continued export of meat to them.

Listen to Richard Norton, ex CEO of Meat and Livestock Australia, demystify the economic consequences of an outbreak of foot and mouth disease

on the Burgernomics podcast.

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