Funny how bolthead doesn't report on this near $ 13 billion foot and mouth catastrophe courtesy of our bio-terrorist pm. But what do you expect from a pm who does telephone and email spam and thinks he is smart. He's the champ and we're his chumps.
" Dateline SBS
FOOT AND MOUTH – AUSTRALIA’S NARROW ESCAPE
On Wednesday August 3 at 8.30pm an SBS Television DATELINE special investigation reveals how Australia’s top bio- security and quarantine bureaucrats risked a $ 13 billion foot and mouth catastrophe when they allowed the Heinz company to import a shipment of beef last year from Brazil – a country where foot and mouth disease is endemic.
Peter Martin reports on how alarm bells rang for Liberal Party Senator Bill Heffernan on Christmas Eve last year following a tip off that the beef had been dumped at the Wagga Wagga tip. He raced there to see what was going on.
Heffernan tells DATELINE “I thought well if it’s just laying about there some dogs could pick it up, or bloody cats or someone wanted to feed off their pets if it hadn’t gone right off.”
While Heinz had legally imported the material and apparently sourced it from zones declared disease free. DATELINE reveals that the Biosecurity Australia, responsible for protecting Australia’s enviable clean and green reputation, had not conducted any inspection in Brazil.
DATELINE travels to Brazil to see for itself what the risk of disease is - and the results are startling. The program found that the so called “FMD free zones” are highly porous, with cattle able to wander into Brazil from countries with a history of disease .Despite a vigorous disease control campaign, Jose Severino Durey from Brazil’s animal health agency IAGRO concedes;
“We have 800 kilometres of dry borders. There’s no way that police can control these 800 kilometres…”
Heffernan has presided over a powerful senate committee inquiring into how and why the beef was imported. DATELINE uses video of key moments from the hearing to reveal a trail of bungling and obfuscation by Canberra bureaucrats. DATELINE also examines Biosecurity Australia’s record in other areas in the light of a recent scathing judgement by the Federal Court in relation to imported pig meat, describing the agencies’ risk assessment for pork to be “unsupported by any fact, scientific evidence or scientific expertise.” The judgement is currently under appeal.
Pork producer Dugald Walker, who was part of the Federal Court challenge, feels that Biosecurity Australia’s scientific risk assessment processes have been subverted by Canberra’s free trade push: “The government have got off on a trade agenda and they , I have no doubt, made a conscious decision to back off on health requirements for imported agricultural products.”
That accusation is strongly denied by John Cahill, Biosecurity Australia’s Chief Executive. "
