How a pig disease posed a hidden biosecurity trap for beef exports

It may come as a confronting surprise for cattle producers to learn that a pig disease could have cost them access to a key export beef market, had it made the relatively short hop from Timor Leste since gaining a foothold there in 2019.

At LIVEXchange 2025, former chief veterinary officer Dr Mark Schipp revealed that, under the wording of Australia’s certification protocol with South Korea at the time, an outbreak of African Swine Fever (ASF) on Australian soil would have forced an immediate halt to beef exports to that market.

Dr Schipp was asked at conference in Perth by veteran WA export industry stakeholder Garry Robinson how prepared Australia was diplomatically to re-establish trade as quickly as possible in the event of a major disease incursion.

Mr Robinson noted that “people in the supply chain in our business could be broken in days, weeks or months” should a disease outbreak trigger a trade shutdown.

Dr Schipp, a globally recognised scientist who has also served as president of the World Organisation for Animal Health, said that after African Swine Fever entered Indonesia and Timor Leste in 2019, followed by Lumpy Skin Disease and then Foot and Mouth Disease in Indonesia in 2022, “we took a big effort to look at what would happen if we had an incursion of those diseases”.

Some of what the review revealed was “quite surprising”, he said.

One example was the realisation that if African Swine Fever (ASF) had crossed into nearby Australia after arriving in Indonesia in 2019 – which thankfully it has not – a consequence would have been an immediate stop to Australian beef exports to Korea.

How a disease affecting pigs could affect a major trade in beef came down to the technical wording of the export protocol certification.

“There is no overlap between beef and pork and ASF presenting in beef,” Dr Schipp stressed.