In late 2022, I wrote an article for the Epoch Times titled: Not the Bees! Varroa Mite Madness…

At the time I was furious about the heavy-handed response from Australia’s biosecurity procedures to the accidental introduction of Varroa mites. A decision – well, more like an unstoppable panic – was made to cull around 45 million bees, both farmed and native, along the mid-north coast.

The reckless destruction began with 1,533 hives on 31 properties but the killing spree quickly got out of control in a situation the Australian Honey Bee Industry Council called ‘heartbreaking’.

The then-Coalition NSW Agricultural Minister, Dugald Saunders, told commercial beekeepers that while they would be compensated for lost bees, hives, and equipment – the state government would not assist beekeepers with lost income. This means, in practice, the government can come in, kill all your farm animals or destroy your crops, and then leave – even if the mistake was theirs.

This sort of scorched earth behaviour has trashed many agricultural regions around the world.

Did the bee genocide work?

Of course not. It has never worked. We have plenty of evidence that murdering bees by their millions does not stop the spread of Varroa mites. Once the mistake is made to let them into the country, that’s it. We even had the benefit of a test case in New Zealand 22 years ago to work from and chose to ignore their experience. It took us $100 million and 15 months to come to the same conclusion.

The bulk of the damage done to Australia’s bee industry has been wholly self-inflicted.

In a pattern of behaviour that mimics the government response to Covid (except for the slaughter of civilians), overreaction and a belief in the government having god-like powers made the situation worse.

Ironically, the arrival of Varroa mites into the Newcastle area looks to be part of the fallout from the Covid mismanagement which left a backlog of container ships at major ports – ships that may not have been checked as carefully as usual. That is the theory. We do not know which ship, when, or how many times our quarantine was broken because the monitoring of mite arrivals is surprisingly primitive. The government uses sentinel hives (hives positioned around the ports) hoping to pick up a new infestation and raise the alarm.

In summary, the mass slaughter of bees was done expressly against existing scientific evidence and yet somehow still ‘in the name of science’.

There’s been no apology to the beekeepers.

Killing bees is a dangerous thing to do – particularly native bees which are not impacted by Varroa mites. They were innocent bystanders. No bees – no ecosystem.

So let’s agree that our biosecurity response learned zero lessons from Covid and nearly collapsed the ecosystem just as the Covid response nearly collapsed the economy.

Fast-forward to 2024 and the Bird flu outbreak in south-eastern Australia has triggered a mass slaughter of hens and subsequent egg shortage in some supermarkets.

Just like the bees, our biosecurity system has a ‘zero tolerance’ approach to High Pathogenicity Avian Influenza (HPAI) meaning every bird on the farm is killed. Yes, infected birds usually die, but do we really need to kill every bird on the farm instead of practising a bit of isolation and monitoring first?

A million hens have been culled in south-western Victoria across seven farms. There is more death and destruction to come in New South Wales and the ACT. These farmers face extended periods of times, often years, with no income following a cull. Not only does it take time for a flock to recover, the government requires the farm to sit empty for many months. Imagine being told you won’t be allowed to earn money seven months because someone else coughed. How would you cope? Is that it for your mortgage? Farmers are not compensated beyond the price of the bird because none of the disaster recovery funding is available or applicable to biosecurity. (Worse, each bird is assessed for value meaning most birds are not given a replacement value.) Farmers pay for their pathetic levels of compensation via the poultry industry levy. This dire situation has been known for years and yet Labor has done nothing to change the situation to protect our farmers.

Australia is a place that offers a huge f-you to generational farmers, and a welcome mat to the newly arrived city voters.

For this cruel political position, politicians are gifted seats in Parliament and our country is given food shortages and misery. Why does no one talk about it?

Bird flu outbreaks happen every few years and begin with contact from wild birds coming out of Asia. This is a situation that will never change and the industry is still coping economically from the last outbreak. How many more times can farmers absorb the cost of their flock being massacred? This is a serious question which, if we do not answer it soon, may result in Australian egg farmers going under.

We also have an interesting dilemma unfolding.

Animal rights groups have successfully turned the public mood sufficiently to convince politicians to ban cage eggs by 2036, but free-range egg farms – where hens mingle with wild birds – are the most vulnerable to Bird flu.

I never buy caged eggs and I am not going to sit here and support battery-cage farms. My point is that we are setting up a system that has a vulnerability which is being ignored by our biosecurity legislation that will act like a fox in the hen house and rip the industry – and food security – to shreds.

Before we lurch straight toward the crutch of rapidly developed vaccines, as we did in Covid, Graeme Cooke, the Chief Veterinary Officer in Victory said:

‘This is a virus that changes a lot, and very rapidly. While there are some avian influenza vaccines available in the world, they’re not very effective and it takes a long time to get a vaccinated population. The national approach, and global approach, is to find the disease and remove it. At the moment, we have no other evidence that would leave us to even contemplate vaccines at present.’

Sheesh. I guess we lucked out. Covid vaccines might have been dangerous and ineffective, but at least they didn’t go for the Bird flu approach…

Normally I write to propose a solution; today I seek a discussion. Any takers?