The almost 10 year ban that Australia has placed on importing beef from countries affected by bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), or mad cow disease, has this week been lifted.
Under the new regulations, countries can request permission to export beef to Australia, and Food Standards Australia New Zealand (FSANZ) will, over at least 20 weeks, assess the application before deciding whether or not to accept it.
According to Lydia Buchtmann from FSANZ, the imported beef ban was reconsidered because the industry has become more aware of BSE and how it is contracted. "What's changed behind it [the ban] is the science and the policy. So initially, because we didn't know how mad cow disease was transmitted to humans, there was a ban on importing beef from any country with so much as one case of BSE. Now we know a lot more about the science and ... countries can apply to us to do a risk assessment and we'll be looking at all the safety processes," she said.
The 20 week assessment of potential import markets will include an examination of their veterinary practices, ensuring that they remove the animal's brain and spinal cord (which is how BSE is spread), that they don't feed the cows meat and that they can trace the cattle and know exactly where the animals have come from.
While many farmers are concerned that the imported meat won't be subject to as stringent an identification process as Australian beef, according to Buchtmann, the majority of the beef industry is "on side with it".
"We needed to bring the science up to date to show how BSE is transmitted and then there was also concern from local cattle producers, in fact, that even if we had one case of BSE, and it can happen spontaneously in an elderly cow, we'd have to ban our own beef, which would be silly," she said.
Despite the lifting of the ban, it is unlikely that Australia will start importing a significant amount of meat because of our own good quality, cheap beef and the high costs of beef in Europe and North America as well as the cost of transporting it to Australia.
It is also unlikely, according to Meat and Livestock Australia (MLA), that any imports will affect the price of beef for the foodservice industry. The MLA website reads "The Australian cattle industry has competed effectively against imports in our domestic market for many years from a range of countries including the US prior to 2003. The small quantity of beef imports into Australia over time is testament to our competitiveness - and this will continue."
Unlike pork and seafood, the small amount of fresh beef that is imported, which at the moment comes from Vanuatu and New Zealand, will not have to be labelled as an imported product. Packaged goods however, do need to be labelled by the country of origin.
