Live cattle imports worry Maru

LIVE cattle imports pose huge biosecurity risks to domestic cattle, according to the International Trade and Investment Minister Richard Maru.
Maru said past shipments of cattle and buffalo from Queensland the Northern Territory, Australia had introduced cattle tick and brucellosis diseases.
He has questioned the viability of proposed imported cattle herds that could bring disease to local cattle in the country.
Maru said: “It is definitely not in the best interest of PNG, importation of live cattle poses huge biosecurity risks, disease outbreaks could cause major production losses and seriously affect PNG’s potential international livestock trade and have drastic economic and social impact on the whole country.
“This proposal should be outlawed.”
In 1970, a shipment of cattle and buffalo from Queensland and Northern Territory to Urimo in the Sepik Plains, also brought in cattle tick and brucellosis diseases that affected about 10,000 cattle herds in East Sepik, Maru said.
The offspring of the shipped buffalo still carry the brucellosis disease in the Sepik plains today and these infected cattle are difficult to control and cause cattle breeding problems.
“The second example is the outbreak of cattle tick in Markham valley in 1996,” Maru said.
Ticks were imported along with cattle from Queensland for breeding by a major cattle company, thanks to Naqia and the Cattle Industry for quick action that contained the pest from spreading.”
He believed live cattle imports aren’t the best option to develop the cattle industry as they pose a grave risk.
Maru made this assessments following the Livestock ministry’s announcement, through its regulator Livestock Development Corporation (LDC), of a proposed importation of cattle from the Queensland market that’s expected in the long term to reduce the cost of beef, through slaughtering and breeding programmes.
Maru said the LDC’s plan to import live cattle from Australia must be stopped and the “import of live cattle has the potential to wipe out and destroy the cattle industry instead of growing it, from experiences of live imported cattle that brought pests and diseases in the past”.
For breeding purposes, the minister proposed artificial insemination (AI) methods that have been done successfully.
Maru said Ramu Beef is PNG’s major cattle producer and had been breeding cattle through AI techniques for years, and the country has experienced AI technicians.