Trade flows after scare

Press, 30 May 1983, Page 1

Trade flows after scare

NZPA Darwin The United States and the European Economic Community are continuing to import meat products and livestock from Australia in spite of the foot-and-mouth scare in the Northern Territory. “It is business as usual,” said the secretary of the Northern Territory Primary Production Department, Mr Baden Cameron, yesterday. The United States Department of Agriculture and the E.E.C. had officially informed the Commonwealth Export Inspection Service of their decision, he said.

The Commonwealth body is responsible for the certification of meat exports.

Federal and Northern Territory Government authorities have been worried about the possibility of Australia’s big export markets closing as a result of the discovery on Friday of a mystery disease in two feral pigs on a 2ha farm at Humpty Doo, in the Darwin rural area.

The pigs, four to five months old, had blisters on their snouts and feet. Blood and tissue samples were taken from them before they were slaughtered, burnt, and buried in a lime pit. The symptoms were described as similar to the virulent exotic disease, but could also have been caused by caustic substances and plant allergies..

Primary production officers in Darwin are now investigating the possibility that the pigs suffered a reaction to the sap of paw paws or to a chemical spray for bananas. Mr Cameron said that the

pigs had eaten paw paws, and the farm owner, Mr Jack Maggs, had been spraying banana trees. He said departmental teams had inspected all livestock within a radius of 50 square kilometres of Mr Maggs’ Arnhem highway property, and had found no further evidence of disease symptoms, which suggested that the agent causing the symptoms in the pigs had not been an exotic disease. Mr Cameron said that a quarantine order, which banned the movement of all stock in the suspect area, would remain in place until the results of tests on the blood and tissue samples were known. The samples were expected to arrive in London yesterday, and were to be taken immediately to the world reference centre at Pirbright, Surrey, to be tested for the presence of exotic disease. Such tests cannot be done in Australia because of a Federal Government ban on the import of live swine vesicular disease virus. Mr Cameron said the results of the tests could be known within days, or within three weeks at the most. He said it was his department’s opinion that the pigs 'were not suffering from an exotic disease, but routine quarantine measures had to 'be implemented. Mr Cameron’ said the feeding of swill or wet garbage to pigs was banned in Australia and Mr Maggs had told the authorities that he fed his animals on vegetable and fruit scraps from the farm, and chicken feed pellets.