Northern Territory Second Reading Speeches

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STOCK DISEASES AMENDMENT BILL 1999

Bill presented and read a first time.

Mr PALMER (Primary Industry and Fisheries): Mr Speaker, I move that the bill be now read a second time.

This bill amends the Stock Diseases Act to ensure that the Northern Territory has the ability to play its part in national programs which protect Australia’s status as an exporter of disease-free livestock and livestock products. Despite Australia’s enviable position in terms of disease-freedom, it is essential in today’s trading environment, that we not only be free of disease, but we are able to prove our freedom in the international arena.

Australia has remained free of BSE, or bovine spongiform encephalopathy, commonly called ‘mad cow disease’, through a combination of good luck and good management. In order to capitalise on this freedom, Australia has put in place a program to investigate any suspect animal to ensure that we would detect BSE if it occurred here. Clearly the aim of this national transmissible encephalopathy surveillance program is to demonstrate our freedom from disease, but we can only do that if we genuinely investigate the extent that, if the disease was here, we would find it. That program is backed up by regulations to ensure that if a case of BSE did occur in Australia there could be no spread of that disease from one animal to another.

BSE was found in cattle in the United Kingdom after a change in feed production processes. Cattle feeds were being made which included, as one of their ingredients, cooked material derived from sheep. A change in the cooking times and temperatures allowed the causative agent of BSE to remain infectious in the feed, and an outbreak of BSE in cattle resulted. The UK put in place a ban on feeding such materials to ruminants to prevent further spread of the disease.

Mr Speaker, you might think that, as Australia is free of BSE, such a ban is not needed. BSE is a surprising disease in that not only can it spread from animal to animal through feeding practices, but it can also very rarely appear spontaneously. About one in a million cattle could develop BSE without any exposure to infectious material. The regulations which prohibit the feeding of material derived from ruminants to other ruminants are designed to ensure that should one of these sporadic cases of BSE occur, there is no possibility of spread to other animals.

It is common practice for abattoir waste material to be rendered, that is cooked at very high temperatures and made into meat, blood or bone meal which can then be incorporated into manufactured feeds for livestock. All states in Australia have implemented a ban such that material from ruminants cannot be included in feeds for other ruminants. All states have also agreed to extend this ban to prevent the feeding of material from mammals to ruminants and the NT regulations are being changed to this effect now. In order to ensure that people within the feed manufacturing industry, and elsewhere in the livestock industry, comply with this requirement, departmental inspectors need to be able to check feed manufacturing operations, and also other points in the chain of supply of livestock feeds, to see that banned ingredients aren’t included in feeds made for ruminants and that labelling requirements are followed.

Late last year, we identified a deficiency in our own legislation in that our legislation did not give inspectors the power to take samples away from the feed manufacturing plant for testing. This bill currently before the House rectifies that deficiency. It also makes it clear that inspectors may inspect livestock, fodder and other things to confirm that operators are complying with the legislation, without the need for any suspicion of a breach of the act or of the presence of disease. More and more, the animal health services in Australia are operating in this manner. Rather than putting in place laws, and then attempting to either detect breaches of the legislation or to detect disease, the new international trading environment requires that we demonstrate compliance with the legislation and the absence of disease. Naturally, in establishing compliance with the legislation and the absence of disease, we also find that we will detect any breaches of the legislation and we will detect the disease where it occurs.

Apart from rectifying the deficiency in our legislation, this bill recognises the new environment in which our animal industry regulators work. It will help to underpin Australia’s BSE-free status, and it will help to maintain Australia’s reputation as the most disease-free source of livestock and livestock products. I commend this bill to the House.

Debate adjourned.

 

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