THE Federal Opposition will introduce a private members' bill into both Houses of Parliament in a bid to block new laws that will allow beef to be imported from country's affected by bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE).
The Coalition has slammed the new rules, which come into effect on Monday, arguing that they would not require foreign cattlemen to meet the same safety standards as those imposed on Australian producers via traceback systems such as the National Livestock Identification Scheme (NLIS).
It is also demanding that a quarantine import risk analysis (IRA) be carried out when a foreign country applies to send its beef to Australia.
As part of Australia's quarantine protections, an IRA is required by law for all new countries wishing to send fresh food to Australia, but beef from BSE-affected countries would not be subject to that requirement under the Government's proposed changes, the Coalition says.
"When you start importing meat from a country that has BSE and you do it under far more lax credentials that your own farmers have to follow ... then you have to wonder at the sanity of it," Opposition agriculture spokesman John Cobb said in a press conference at Parliament House this afternoon.
"Why would you, when the WTO rules allow you to demand of people who import into Australia the same protocols that you demand of your own farmers?
"We demand this, yes, because it is a marketing tool, but we also demand it because it is a necessary regulatory tool to ensure the health, not just of people, but of Australian agriculture."
Mr Cobb said the countries most likely to want to send beef to Australia - Canada, the United States and Brazil - would all fail to meet the safety and traceback standards imposed on the domestic industry.
While the private members bills are unlikely to be successful given that Labor has the numbers in the House of Representatives, Senator Fiona Nash said there needed to be a vocal producer backlash to send a message to the Agriculture Minister Tony Burke to change the legislation.
She argued that while the peak bodies had been consulted, there had been no communication of the details of the proposed laws to grassroots producers.
However, the Cattle Council of Australia says the public stoush has scared the general public out of eating beef.
It insisted that the changes to BSE import rules would not affect the food safety status of beef in Australia, and singled out the Austalian Beef Association for criticism.
"It's unfortunate to see people taking political opportunism at the expense of the people and industry that they claim to represent," CCA president Greg Brown said.
"What do you think consumers will choose for dinner tonight when they’re faced with a choice between beef and chicken? Such a beat-up with the media is completely irresponsible and this behaviour needs to stop.
"Cattle Council supports trade based on science and international rules. We would never support action that would water down Australia’s strict approach to quarantine or erode consumer confidence in the safety and quality of our beef."
The ABA today argued that the science of BSE was far from settled, pointing to a report last December in which Professor John Collinge, head of the UK Prion Clinic, announced that vCJD (Variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease - the human form of BSE) had "jumped the fence".
"They had discovered it in a death of a Scotsman, whose genes were different to those of the 166 deaths already recorded in UK," ABA president Brad Bellinger said.
"This knowledge was unavailable to Professor Mathews - the Health Statistician that the Government chose to do an 18-day review in September and announce that there is virtually no risk in importing beef from countries with BSE."
Liberal Senator Chris Back agreed that the science was not settled and said there was no way of testing meat for the disease at country of origin or upon arrival.
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