A COMPOSTING facility planned within 70 metres of Bendigo Livestock Exchange could jeopardise the Loddon’s biosecurity.
Murray Plains MP Peter Walsh last week told State Parliament the project approved by City of Greater Bendigo was a risk to the future of farmers.
More than one million head of sheep are sold at the saleyards every year. Stock agents have estimated at least 65 per cent of sheep come from properties in the Loddon Shire.
Mr Walsh called for Agriculture Minister Ros Spence to declare the saleyards a sensitive receptor site - an area where there is a risk of exposure to toxic chemicals, pesticides, and other pollutants - under Environmental Protection Authority Guidelines.
Mr Walsh told Parliament: “Bendigo Livestock Exchange is the major livestock selling centre in northern Victoria, with sheep and lamb sales 46 weeks of the year, as well as special sheep sales from time to time, and total livestock trades of more than one million head annually. 
“To assist the logistics of transacting livestock numbers on this scale, there are holding paddocks adjacent to the selling yards in which livestock can be held for a short period. 
“The Bendigo Livestock Exchange also creates employment for the equivalent of 70 full-time employees, many of whom are on site for three days a week. “All this is being put at risk by (Greater) Bendigo City Council’s decision to allow Western Composting Technology Pty Ltd to develop a composting site within 70 metres of the selling yards at the livestock exchange – effectively the width it takes for a truck to pull in and back up to the unloading ramps. Western Composting Technology will be receiving commercial garden waste and food waste at the site.”
Mr Walsh told Parliament during the adjournment debate on Thursday that alarm bells should be ringing about food waste being trucked in from anywhere in the state to this site.  Meat product illegally imported into Victoria could easily find its way into this site, and there lies the biosecurity risk for our national livestock sector,” he said. 
“Estimates put the cost to the Australian economy of a foot-and-mouth outbreak at more than $50 billion, and that is on top of the devastation and heartbreak of slaughtering millions of livestock. 
“Those who recall the UK foot-and-mouth outbreak in 2001 will remember the TV news coverage of the huge fire piles, as slaughtered livestock were burned to stop the spread of foot-and-mouth. Generations of livestock breeding were destroyed in one outbreak. 
“Foot-and-mouth is endemic in many parts of the world, but not here, and Australia needs to be vigilant to keep it out. So why increase the risk by putting a composting facility which will receive food waste within 70 metres of a major livestock selling centre?”
Mr Walsh said no layers of protocols and rules of operation could guarantee there would not be an outbreak of a livestock disease from locating the composting facility so close to the livestock exchange.