On 20 May, 2025, the Member States of the World Health Organization (WHO) formally adopted the first Pandemic Agreement.
In the shadow of the COVID-19 pandemic, the agreement aims to boost prevention, preparedness and response against pandemic threats to human health.
But what about animal health?
There are currently four significant animal diseases in parts of Asia that pose a potential risk to Australia: avian influenza caused by the H5N1 strains, lumpy skin disease, foot and mouth disease, and terrestrial rabies.
H5N1 avian influenza can infect poultry and wild birds, other animals including seals and dairy herds in the United States, and in rare cases, humans.
It has already killed millions of wild birds and led to over 148 million poultry birds culled in the USA in an attempt to control its spread. These impacts highlight the serious consequences that could arise if H5N1 were to emerge in Australia.
While other emergency animal diseases may not infect such a wide range of species, an outbreak would still have major ramifications.
An outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease in Australia, which affects cattle, sheep, goats and pigs, could led to a loss of $AU80 billion over 10 years.
Australia has a history of using biosecurity to help protect health, industries and the environment.
While strict border custom rules, often referred to as at-border biosecurity, might be the most visible aspect of Australia’s biosecurity system, the full scope of activities is much broader.
Biosecurity measures are generally grouped into three categories: pre-border, at-border, and post-border.
Pre-border activities include the treatment of foods and goods, including live animals and their commodities, before they are imported into Australia.
Post-border activities involved active responses to invasive pest and disease outbreaks within the country.
Given the impending risks of a H5N1 avian influenza outbreak, the Australian government has committed $AU100 million to protect and prepare.
In biosecurity, prevention is better than the cure. Pre-border and at-border activities, and early detection are crucial in reducing the risks and costs of biosecurity threats entering and spreading around the country.
However, unless we stop the movement of people, goods and wild plants and animals entirely, and control the weather, Australia will inevitably face animal disease outbreaks.
Hence, it is also crucial to boost our response, or post-border, capabilities.
Modelling tools can help us synthesise data and produce deeper understanding of the situation or provide forecasts of what could happen next. We can use modelling to help ‘test’ out different strategies and to ready resources.
Developing biosecurity modelling tools and integrating them into routine practice through simulation exercises are important steps in improving biosecurity emergency response preparedness.
This is what we’re doing as part of HASTE – a national industry-government-university collaboration to enhance rapid decision-support for emergency animal disease outbreaks.
During consultations with experts in government and potentially affected livestock industries, we identified several gaps.
Firstly, while existing mathematical models offer valuable insights, they are not yet fully tailored to the needs of specific end-users or outbreak scenarios. Strengthening processes for integrating modelling into animal disease outbreak decision-making presents a key opportunity to enhance the effectiveness of our responses.
Secondly, and more fundamentally, the people and organisations with different strengths and expertise don’t always talk to one another, limiting our ability to coordinate in emergencies.
The key to effective coordination under the pressure of an outbreak is sustained collaborative relationships between model developers, veterinary epidemiologists, key decision-makers and affected stakeholders.
Without this, valuable expertise may not be fully leveraged during major outbreak responses, which can weaken trust in decision-making and allow confusion and misinformation to spread, ultimately undermining response efforts and increasing negative impacts.
Pests and diseases do not care about human-constructed silos and sectors. Given the breadth of impact biosecurity threats can cause, joint cross-sectoral response is needed to deal with them.
We need an adaptable, coordinated, whole-of-government and whole-of-society approach to biosecurity. Thorough expert consultation, all-encompassing coordination and deep stakeholder inclusion is required to develop comprehensive and equitable plans, systems, and responses.
This is easier said than done – whole-of-society coordination needs political commitment, resourcing and a willingness to collaborate at all levels. Rapid biosecurity response requires mutual trust across sectors.
Timely sharing of information at all levels could supercharge response and prevent misinformation, disinformation and stigmatisation, which would mitigate as many social and economic impacts as possible.
Many different groups of people are working towards this vision.
The WHO Pandemic Agreement is a catalyst for this work for human health. For animal biosecurity, there are groups such as CEBRA, CAB, SABRE, and HASTE, working hard to bring together people to develop and embed systems-thinking into biosecurity decision-making.
With accelerated risks of animal disease outbreaks due to factors like climate change and global movements, we need to deploy everything we can to limit widespread impact.
With an integrated biosecurity system, we can have healthier animals, people, communities, cultures, economies and environments.
Enhancing Models for Rapid Decision-Support in Emergency Animal Disease Outbreaks (HASTE) is a co-investment partnership with the ARDC (DOI: 10.47486/DC110). The ARDC is enabled by the Australian Government’s National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy (NCRIS).
HASTE is a partnership between The University of Melbourne, ARDC, CSIRO and the Australian Government Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry. It is also linked to another ARDC-supported project, Biosecurity Commons.
By Dr Christopher M. Baker Dr Bonny Cumming Associate Professor Simon Firestone Dr Thao P. Le Dr James Camac and Kerryne Graham
