Virus threat must not be taken lightly

The risk foot-and-mouth disease poses to our national brand cannot underestimated, writes Donald Reid

THE influence of the media on an industry has seldom been more evident than in 1996 when Oprah Winfrey, in an interview with animal rights activist Howard Lyman about beef production practices, turned to her audience and declared: “Doesn’t that concern you? It has just stopped me cold from eating another burger. I’m stopped”.

With that exclamation, countless audience members vowed to go veg.

The interview was contextualised by the thenrecent outbreak of BSE in Britain. But the US cattle industry, with a disease-free herd, suddenly found itself in a PR battle against the talk show queen. The dispute culminated 18 months later when Texas beef producers brought a lawsuit against Lyman and Winfrey under the False Disparagement of Perishable Food Products Act 1995. The plaintiffs lost; Oprah’s defence was freedom of expression.

The case highlighted the ongoing place of food within often conflicting political, cultural, and economic narratives. Furthermore, and of great significance for those of us researching the processes and effects of mediatization, the beef industry versus Oprah demonstrated the power of perception over almost every other rationale.

In Australia, the red meat industry is fundamental to numerous discourses. Here issues of land use, animal welfare, personal health and nutrition, and the export industry intersect. Alongside that is the enduring – and marketable – mythology surrounding farming in this country. Domestically these narratives are seldom in alignment. They jostle for profile and currency in the culture battles fought across social and legacy media. However, internationally Australia’s image as a producer of high-quality food – underpinned by images of vast landscapes, and tough, innovative and self-reliant farmers – is more robust.

The current threat to the Australian beef industry from an epidemic of the highly contagious foot-andmouth disease, in Indonesia, looms as a potentially apocalyptic wave crashing down from two fronts. The first: the obvious economic fallout. As recently as March the Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics and Sciences forecast 8 per cent growth in beef exports as the industry continued to rebuild after years of droughts; analysts predicted the industry to be valued at $15.7bn by the end of the financial year. A footand-mouth outbreak would decimate this figure, intensify the new government’s fiscal headache and cause many farming operations to go to the wall with devastating flow-on effects.

The second front is that of perception. This is the threat to the Australian industry caused by the destruction of its positive image in the hearts and minds of international trade delegations, themselves directed by their own domestic consumer markets and influenced by opaque horse trading within and between economic blocks. Given the multiple political variables at play, the threat to Australia’s image from foot-and-mouth is as significant, and potentially more long-lasting, than the immediate economic catastrophe.

Internationally Australian beef is one cornerstone of this country’s brand equity – or the economic value of the nation’s symbolic image. Nation branding can exist as an explicit reference, what we call country-of-origin branding, or via the associated values created over time between products and the nations that produced them. The prominence of food in nation branding is a double-edged sword. High brand value obviously indicates an embodied as well as an emotional positive response among consumers; but there’s little residual value if the brand fails. Foot-andmouth poses no danger to humans; the herds will be destroyed before the disease ever enters the food chain. But the perception that the product is infected will permeate through the consumer narrative and no doubt will be exploited by Australia’s trade competitors.

The implications of footand-mouth disease is being taken too lightly by the government because it extends beyond the immediate economy to impact a version of Australian-ness that anchors this country’s outward-facing role in the world.

It is an existential threat.