Jamie Mackay: The Country host on Australian researchers developing a vaccine to stop foot and mouth disease

Australian researchers have developed a vaccine to protect livestock during an outbreak of foot and mouth disease.

The five-year research project was a partnership between Meat & Livestock Australia, Tiba Biotech and the NSW Government - and cost $20 million to develop.

The Country's Jamie Mackay explains further.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
The Rural Report on hither do for see Alan Drive.

Speaker 2 (00:05):
Jamie mckaie, host of the Countries with Me. Now, hey,
Jamie listen put this in context for me. How big
a deal is it that Balance is wanting to shut
up shop for four months?

Speaker 1 (00:14):
A huge, A huge deal. Look, I've only just had
a quick flick of the story and I think has
there been an update they are definitely closing for four months?
Is that they spoke to Calvin Wickham.

Speaker 2 (00:25):
Yeah, so what he says is they haven't got a contract.
It ends at the end of September. If they can
get a replacement contract, they'll keep going. But if they can't,
and that's most likely, then they shut up for four months.

Speaker 1 (00:36):
Yeah. Well that's a disaster for New Zealand agriculture because
something I'm trying to remember the stat off the top
of my head, something like fifty percent of the world's
food is produced from nitrogenous fertilizers or with the help
of nitrogenous fertilizers. So it's huge And when we're trying
to double our exports and get ourselves out of the

(00:56):
economic hole where and we need and farmers need every
to help they can get so shutting up the production
at Capuni because some of the other urea I think
is important. That's the stuff we make here at home
with our own natural gas is a disaster. And all
that does here there is just reinforce the absolute folly

(01:16):
of Chisinda's oil and gas research fan and twenty eighteen,
what an idiotic move. The chickens are really coming home
to roost on that one.

Speaker 2 (01:25):
Give me a bit of context here again, right, So
at the moment, what we've got is we've got an
export lead recovery if the farmer is pulling us out
of the situation, this recession that we're in. But now
we've got Trump's tariffs coming at US fifteen percent on
exports that go to the US. A lot of that
will be red meat. And then you've also got the
fact that we now have to potentially import all this
uria and this fertilizers, so that's going to add costs.

(01:46):
So is our export lead recovery strong enough to withstand
these knocks coming at them?

Speaker 1 (01:52):
Well, you can bet one thing that, regardless of whether
they get their natural gas supply or not, Balance and
Ravens down the other big fertilizer producer in this country
or competitor. The price of nitrogen fertilizers is going to
go up. The price of fertilizers has gone up, I
think in the Rabobank August outlook that came out today

(02:15):
something like ureas already up by twelve percent month on
month from July so or from June to July. So. Look,
it's going to put the export lead recovery under threat.
It's just going to make it more expensive for farmers
to grow grass and to get and to produce milk

(02:35):
and to produce meat.

Speaker 2 (02:36):
Hey, that's that foot and mouth vaccine out of New
South Wales. It a big deal.

Speaker 1 (02:42):
Well, I think so. This is of course using let
me get my my terminology right here, Heather. It's using
the help me out here, the same stuff that we
did with the COVID vaccine. Yeah, mRNA, sorry about that.
It's the same sort of technology. Interestingly, it's been developed

(03:04):
in Australia, but they had to test it in Germany
on cow's tested over there. It's going to be good
news because at the moment you can't you can't vaccinate
in advance. But this sort of thing is supposedly when
we get when and if we get an outbreak, and
Heaven help us if we do, the price of the

(03:26):
urea will be the least of our problems. If we
get foot and mouth here, it's last one to leave.
Turn the lights out. But they've got very good results
on this one. Cattle vaccinated cattle in these German based trials,
when exposed to the disease, did not share the virus.
And that's one of the big problems with foot and
mouth disease. It's so highly contagious. And Australia's quoting eighty

(03:50):
billion dollars if foot and mouth broke out in Australia,
So I would say you could probably maybe half that
or even a week bit more for US forty or
fifty billion, and that would just be off the top
of my head. So you can imagine how that would
go down in New Zealand. We would literally if we
got foot and mouth here, we could go broke as

(04:11):
a nation. All right.

Speaker 2 (04:12):
So just a bundle of happy, happy, happy good news
for news tonight, jan Thank you so much, enjoying evening,
Jamie McKay, Host of the Country.

Speaker 1 (04:21):
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