ANZFA confirms Foot and Mouth Disease is not a food safety issue

The Australia New Zealand Food Authority (ANZFA) today confirmed that Foot and Mouth disease (FMD) is not a food safety issue for humans and for this reason is not requiring a recall of European dairy and meat products from shelves.

This follows the Australian Quarantine and Inspection Service's (AQIS) temporary suspension, as an animal health issue, of the import of animals susceptible to FMD and all animal related products from the European Union and from any country in which FMD is endemic or is occurring as an outbreak. This is because the virus could spread from products into animal populations.

The remaining products on supermarket shelves should pose no threat to human health and food safety, and have therefore not been recalled from supermarkets.

The only European origin meat and meat products that ANZFA has asked to be removed from shelves are those beef products that pose a BSE (Mad Cow Disease) related safety risk to people. This occurred as an emergency measure announced on 5 January 2001 by the Chief Medical Officer Professor Richard Smallwood and is because BSE has a human form (known as vCJD) which is linked to the consumption of BSE infected beef and is fatal. ANZFA is currently developing a food standard to formalise this arrangement.

BSE and FMD are two totally different diseases. There is no human form of FMD, and ANZFA confirms that FMD presents no threat to public health or food safety. Humans cannot contract the virus by eating meat or meat products derived from infected animals.