Industry, Government Discuss FMD Risk

Government and livestock industry representatives yesterday met in Canberra to discuss Australia's readiness to deal with FMD, reports ABCRural.

The Sheepmeat Council says it's encouraging that those groups all see eye-to-eye on what needs to be done.

President Ian McColl says Australia has learned from overseas experiences and is well placed to respond to an incursion.

"We've got plans in place. We do have a vaccine bank, which is held overseas, which has about one million doses for sheep or 500,000 doses for cattle," he said.

"Certainly at a producer level, early detection is extremely important.

"The reality is that it's probably going to take two to four weeks as a minimum for any level of detection [in the event of an incursion], so we'll be working with producers over the next period of time to improve any level of early detection."