Tasman nations unite on disease prevention

Nathan Guy says New Zealand has already joined the well-established Australian training programme in Nepal.

New Zealand and Australia will work together to prepare for an unlikely outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) in either country.

Foot-and-mouth is an infectious and sometimes fatal viral disease that affects sheep, cattle and other cloven-hoofed animals.

If it turned up in New Zealand its effects on the economy could be more devastating than infestation by the Queensland fruitfly, which led to two biosecurity alerts in Whangarei this year.

New Zealand Minister for Primary Industries Nathan Guy and Australian Minister for Agriculture Barnaby Joyce have signed a memorandum of understanding to emphasise the importance of collaboration. "Our No1 plan and focus of much of our biosecurity efforts is to keep FMD out of Australia and New Zealand," Joyce said. "But you can't stick your head in the sand about something this significant, you have to plan for the worst.

"Recent research found the impact of an FMD outbreak in Australia could cost our economy up to A$52 billion [$56 billion] over 10 years, therefore we have more than 50 billion reasons to work together to continue Australia's 100-year record of freedom from FMD."

Guy said the two countries would share intelligence on risk, collaborate on training, share scarce skills in the event of an outbreak and influence international policy in the area of disease management.

"New Zealand has now joined the well-established Australian FMD training programme in Nepal, which has engaged the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation to provide veterinarians and key livestock industry representatives the opportunity to experience FMD in the field."

New Zealand provided veterinary assistance to the successful New South Wales avian influenza eradication effort and continues to observe the Australian FMD simulation Exercise Odysseus, a series of discussion and field-base exercises being held throughout this year.