It is seeking urgent meetings with the Federal Government to try to reverse the decision.

Despite initially welcoming the Beale report as a review into Australia’s quarantine, the Cattle Council of Australia says it overlooked one key recommendation – the importation of the FMD virus, to develop tests and vaccines in Australia.

Such an import could have damning and long-standing consequences for the industry.

The Federal Government last week gave in-principle approval to all 84 recommendations in the report, which recommends one of the biggest overhauls to quarantine seen in Australia for more than 100 years.

But the recommendations also include plans to overturn a 30-year ban on bringing the live FMD virus to Australia.

It says such imports are “vital” to Australia’s research efforts at places like the Australian Animal Health Laboratory, based near Geelong.

Cattle Council president Greg Brown says the council fiercely disagrees with the report’s view that such imports are “vital” to Australia’s quarantine efforts.

He says allowing the strain onto Australian shores would instead be “the biggest folly any industry, or Government, could commit.

“Cattle Council will violently oppose any moves to import live foot and mouth disease."

“There have been countless attempts to do so in the past and all have failed.

“I have never heard of a reasonable case put to justify the imports.

"I still don’t think they are justified for the purposes of research.”

Mr Brown says the Government “will need to do some explaining” as it is aware of the livestock industry’s longstanding policy of opposition to live imports of such virus.

“We’ve seen how human error can cause outbreaks, as happened in Britain last year,” Mr Brown says.

“If the same mistake were to happen here, it would not be months, but years before Australia could regain any ground in its many red-meat markets.