Hundreds of thousands of chickens have been destroyed, horses locked down and racing suspended in recent years because of livestock disease outbreaks, but if highly contagious foot-and-mouth swept across Australia, the consequences are hard to imagine.
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"It would make bushfires look like a picnic," says Rural Land Owners Association president Tom Allen.
To plan for such an outbreak, ACT and federal agencies held a training exercise on Tuesday, roping in police, roads, emergency services, agricultural agencies, the RSPCA – and about 100 cows.
ACT Territory and Municipal Services senior manager, biosecurity, Stephen Hughes said the exercise was held on sale day at the Oaks Estate saleyard, Queanbeyan, to add realism.
"You can do a discussion exercise in a room, but unless you have people out there with 100 head of cattle, seeing the reality of what the saleyard looks like and what they would have to deal with in terms of how to feed and water stock for 72 hours, [it is hard to imagine]," he said.
"How they would have to clean up the faeces dropping onto the ground, and what they would do with it, including runoff from the saleyard into the Molonglo River.
"They would have to get dozers out here and put in embankments around the whole area, so there is no spread of the disease outside the saleyard itself."
An outbreak could cripple wool and meat exports and inflict losses of $50 billion. Mr Hughes said it could take the livestock industry 10 years to recover.
Livestock sales would stop immediately. All saleyards would be locked down in a "livestock standstill". No movement of sheep or cattle or pigs would be allowed anywhere in Australia for at least 72 hours.
Roadblocks would stop cars and trucks so inspectors could look for animals, including in the boots of cars for lambs or piglets.
Mr Hughes said when equine influenza arrived from Japan in 2007, the ACT's horse community was locked down, draining government resources, an effort that would be hard to sustain for long.
Mr Allen said the ACT's 12,000 head of cattle and 58,000 sheep would have to join the national standstill.
He said Canberra was more prone to an outbreak than people might realise.
"We're an embassy town, 10 per cent of our population are always on the move and it would take only a bit of [diseased] hamburger in the corner of a finger, eaten on an overseas flight, or in the nostrils [to cause an outbreak]," he said.
Mr Allen is impressed with agencies' and landowners' knowledge of the risks, because of their observations abroad.
He said land surrounding the saleyard could hold 600 cattle, giving them respite from standing on cement for hours during a standstill.
Mr Hughes said foot-and-mouthwas highly contagious, affecting cloven-hoofed animals including pigs, sheep, cattle, goats, deer and alpacas.
