Foot-and-Mouth Disease (FMD) is a multispecies disease and, therefore, the greatest disease threat to Australia’s livestock industries. The effects of an outbreak would be devastating. The economic impact on Australia’s livestock industry alone has been estimated at $80 billion over a 10-year period. The social and mental well-being of farming communities would also be severely affected. To best prepare Australia for a possible FMD outbreak, CSIRO, Meat and Livestock Australia, AHA, Charles Sturt University, the Bureau of Meteorology, the Australian Department of Agriculture, Water and the Environment and the Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics and Sciences came together to undertake the FMD Ready Project. We asked CSIRO’s Dr Andy Sheppard and Dr Wilna Vosloo a few questions about the Project and what the team achieved. If you are interested to learn more, you can download the report or visit the Project webpage.

What were you hoping to achieve when you started the Project?

The key goal of the FMD Ready Project was to help ensure Australia is prepared in the event of an emergency animal disease (EAD) outbreak, using FMD as a model. Part of this was also to help develop the processes and support tools to ensure a rapid return to trade following an outbreak.

It’s important to note that the Project builds on substantial work from the FMD-Risk Management Project (FMD-RMP), which focussed on the laboratory aspects and vaccine testing of FMD preparedness. FMD Ready aimed to take this work further by expanding a vaccination-based strategy for FMD control, optimising farm-based surveillance, and improving decision support to more rapidly resolve EAD outbreaks.

Did the Project achieve these goals and if so, can you give some examples of specific achievements?

Yes, we were very pleased with the outcomes FMD Ready achieved over the life of the Project. Some examples of achievements include:

• Improving decision-making on which antigens should be included when renewing Australia’s FMD vaccine bank
• Improving the availability, accuracy, and efficiency of diagnostic tests for use in the detection of an FMD incursion to ensure accurate diagnosis and surveillance
• Improving the participation of primary producers in biosecurity and surveillance networks. This resulted in increased awareness of how to recognise and report EADs, and helped to build trust in local networks between primary producers and government agencies
• Increasing the interest of government agencies in working with livestock industry networks to improve biosecurity and surveillance outcomes
• Development of biosecurity communication tools by producers for producers
• Updating and expanding the Australian Animal Disease spread model (AADIS) as a decision support tool and integrating it with improved economic modelling to inform disease control strategies, including vaccination and the use of trading zones to support earlier return to trade.
• Development of an application (SPREAD) to incorporate big data into the real-time modelling of disease spread during an EAD outbreak.

One of the greatest achievements was the truly transdisciplinary nature of the FMD Ready Project. Using this approach, we were able to demonstrate that collaboration between different research disciplines (e.g., modelling, economics, science) combined with direct interaction and collaboration with livestock industries, governments, RDCs and other agencies, can deliver solutions to highly complex problems.

What are the key benefits to livestock industries that the Project has delivered?

The greatest benefit is that we have developed a suite of tools that will ensure Australia is better prepared for an EAD incursion. As a result, this will provide better protection to our livestock industries and lessen the potential for disease impact.

For example, the approaches we designed to improve on-farm surveillance and reporting of unusual events will help increase the odds of early detection. The earlier an EAD is recognised, the less chance there is for a widespread outbreak, which also limits the impact.

By modelling simulated outbreaks, we tested how best to control an outbreak if it does occur. We now have greater insight into how to control outbreaks in different sectors of the livestock industry using various approaches, including vaccination strategies. We also designed options to improve post-outbreak surveillance, which is important in enabling the proof of disease freedom that is required to resume trade.

Naturally, for important EADs we need to accurately diagnose them, and the Project ensured that the assays for detection and confirmation of FMD are validated and provided methods to trace the virus during outbreaks. The Project also investigated ways to improve the safe transport of biological samples collected from potentially infected animals, thereby improving biosecurity during the diagnostic and surveillance process. Offshore surveillance was done to gather intelligence on the FMD viruses circulating in the SEA region. This meant we were not surprised when the current virus occurred in Indonesia as we had been concerned about the spread of this particular strain for some time. In fact, the Project has tested the vaccines in the Australian Vaccine Bank against this strain to ensure our livestock industries will have access to effective vaccines.

Finally, the Project developed an application called SPREAD, that can be used during an outbreak to trace virus movement using sequence data and climatic conditions. As the name suggests, SPREAD can determine how virus spreads from farm to farm in an outbreak, which would directly benefit affected and neighbouring primary producers, as well as agencies responding to the outbreak. SPREAD was used during the recent highly pathogenic avian influenza outbreaks to help understand virus spread.

Do you think Australia is now FMD ready or is there more work to be done?

Australia is most certainly better prepared now than before we started the Project but given the ongoing and dynamic nature of biosecurity threats, it’s safe to say there will always be more work to be done.

Towards the end of the Project, we worked with our stakeholders to identify future research and development needs. Some of the key activities they identified included continuing to work with the research team in Southeast Asia to ensure up-to-date monitoring of FMD strains and other EADs that are circulating around the world, scaling up the partnerships we established through the Project to increase its reach, and extending SPREAD to include other EADs and more models to track virus spread.

Importantly, we believe that the future success of Australia’s biosecurity, from an understanding of the risks posed by diseases and pests to strong surveillance and implementation of effective systems control, will involve effective collaboration between multiple research disciplines and strong partnerships. To this end, CSIRO is now in the process of engaging with key stakeholders to explore future opportunities in FMD preparedness.