00:00The United States has been able to export to Australia since 2019, but certain products
00:09were banned over concerns related to Mag Cow Disease. That included beef sourced from Canada
00:15or Mexico or slaughtered in the US. Beef producers are concerned though that this could lead
00:22to some biosecurity risks in the future and that's certainly been a topic of conversation
00:27around the sale yards. Beef producer Scotty Han is someone who's been having a think about
00:33this. Scotty, first of all, starting with that news today, how are you feeling about those
00:38bans being lifted? A little bit gobsmacked, I've got to say. It's a huge call from our
00:45federal government to come out with something like this. It's a massive change to protocol
00:49and I guess it exposes us. I think it exposes us immensely. It's of immense concern and I don't
00:55know how what's changed apart from probably some political pressure from the United States.
01:01I mean initially it won't affect us because the United States are so short on meat at the moment
01:06that they're actually importing more than that. It's not going to affect us at the moment but
01:11mad cow and the diseases that they have over there, foot and mouth, if it gets into this country where
01:17we export, we're unique in that our clean green image is compromised immensely.
01:24How concerned are you that there is that very real prospect of mad cow disease or foot and mouth
01:31down the track from this decision? Well whenever there's a protocol in place to protect us and
01:38it's taken out of the equation, well it opens it up. I mean it's a deep concern I believe. Like I
01:43said a minute ago, 70% of our product beef is exported. If that was closed down, and it would
01:50close down overnight, there's no doubt about that. If we got foot and mouth or mad cow here,
01:54every country that we export now to would just, it would cease. So it's literally overnight.
01:59We can't eat all that product in this country and it wouldn't just affect beef, it would be sheep,
02:05any live animals, wool would be affected and countries throughout the world that we have a great
02:10trading partnership with. They would, they would just pull out. The federal government though has
02:16said there's been rigorous assessment and thought and science behind lifting this ban, that they won't
02:22compromise Australia's biosecurity. Well they already have haven't they, by pulling that. I think that's
02:28a cop out. I think again I believe it's political pressure from overseas and that's a knee-jerk reaction.
02:36And it's a bad one. Because like I said it would just kill our industry overnight. The thoughts as this
02:43news comes to light throughout the day are from producers. There are certainly a lot of reactions
02:49to be heard from all parts of our beef supply chain to the news about those bans being lifted.
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