Close entry for tourists for at least six months In Bali and throughout Indonesia, and possibly other countries in Southeast Asia, called on an agricultural official in Australia. And this is not a joke: the reason is an outbreak of a new infection, because of which a catastrophe can happen all over the world with a new epidemic more abruptly than covid and full-scale famine. And we are not talking about the recently famous “monkey pox”. Australian meat and livestock analyst Simon Quilty of Global Agriturismo Trends has called for tourists to be banned from entering the Southeast Asian region for at least six months due to the FMD epidemic that is spreading across the Indonesian archipelago. The contagious disease threatens cattle as well as pigs, which are the virus factories for the disease, the analyst said. But the problem is that the Lizard virus of these animals is easily transferred on people's clothes, and tourists are the most favorable environment for this due to their high mobility. And this is extremely disturbing news, especially against the backdrop of the topic of “world hunger”, which is currently being discussed on all continents thanks to Ukrainian grain: now the shortage of meat, both beef and pork, can be added to the grain deficit.
The details are as follows: foot-and-mouth disease was discovered in Indonesia after the illegal trade in infected livestock. Quilty said FMD has rapidly spread to East, West and Central Java, Lombok and many islands in Indonesia over the past month. “If foot-and-mouth disease comes to Australia, all the markets open to us will close overnight,” he said. At the same time, the Indonesian government, according to him, is extremely slow in responding to the epidemic.
But where are the tourists? In his speech, the analyst stated literally the following. “We are really worried about tourists. Every year before COVID, 1.3 million Australians visited Bali. Now we are open again. We create massive traffic through each of our airports in Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane – and thus risk spreading foot and mouth disease because it is in Bali – and this disease can be transmitted through clothing. As a country, we seriously need to think about banning people from traveling to Bali, as extreme as that sounds,” the analyst said. FMD importation will be only 18%. In the meantime, the chances are “50/50,” Mr. Quilty said. He stressed that this threat is all the more urgent, since the global food crisis could make Australian meat sharply in demand. “While other key supplying countries are being liquidated, Australia is currently rebounding, opening up opportunities to export beef and sheep meat over the next few years to feed the world. We just need to get over this immediate threat of foot and mouth disease on our doorstep,” said Mr. Quilty.
For those who care about a healthy lifestyle, we recommend reading: “The doctor named a dangerous kind of bread.”