You have to turn your feedlot into a fortress: CPC's Troy Setter at Beefex22

Once an exotic animal disease can be seen in a feedlot or on a farm, it's too late. And when you are sick of talking about it, you are just getting started.

These snippets were among the valuable advice from people who have successfully kept the diseases out of their feedlots in Indonesia, passed on to Australia's feedlot managers and owners at the Beefex22 conference.

Consolidated Pastoral Company chief executive officer Troy Setter gave an overview of how the two feedlots CPC owns, in a joint venture with Dicky Adiwoso, have been able to keep the diseases at bay.

The JJAA feedlots, one in northern and one in southern Sumatra, have a capacity to feed just over 100,000 head of Australian cattle each year.

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Mr Setter listed the operation's key learnings as including:

Indonesia has 17000 islands, 275m people and 65m cloven hoofed animals and not much is free from at least some stage of FMD infection, Mr Setter reported.

More than 4m animals are vaccinated, with smaller stock now starting to get vaccinated.

Lumpy skin, however, is getting little attention compared to FMD and there are now cases in Central Java.

There are both short and long-term impacts with LSD that are not well understood.

One of the key aspects is that 15 to 20pc of infected cattle don't show symptoms.

"Most of the photos we see in Australia are of cattle with big weepy wounds but in reality a lot of infected cattle don't have that," Mr Setter said.

"When we got call there was FMD and LSD in Indonesia, we googled 'how do you keep it out' and surprisingly there are some good resources available, especially out of the United States and Australia.

"But there is very little about LSD."

Team communication was a critical part of how CPC had been able to keep the diseases out, Mr Setter said.

"We really had to get clear what we were doing was protecting their jobs and their family's livelihoods," he said.

Immediately, feedlot entry was restricted to only essential equipment and people - and cleaning had to be intensive.

The feedlots were split into zones, with emergency tape run out to separate zones. That was so the areas that needed the most protection - where cattle were - could be separated.

Security guards were engaged to maintain procedures.

"One of the things that took a lot to get through to people was that for chemicals to work, all dust, dirt and manure had to be removed - the chemicals are deactivated by dirt," Mr Setter said.

"Trucks are washed three times before they come in. All shoes are left at the gate and we provide anyone entering with boots.

"On a busy day, 800 changes of clothes will happen.

"Foot baths outside have to be covered as they get dust and dirt in them. Vector control is also very important and along with cattle having tags and being backlined, we fog for vectors each night.

"We've always had what we thought was good biosecurity but lifting it to where we had to get to was rapid and strong.

"You have to turn your feedlot into a fortress."

Today, all animals are vaccinated as they walk off the truck but Mr Setter said the biosecurity measures will have to be maintained. There is still up to 30 days of risk time before immunity sets in.