UP TO 160 properties may have received cattle infected by Bovine Johne's Disease from a central Queensland beef stud.
Queensland Agriculture Minister John McVeigh today went to Rockhampton to meet graziers and organise the state government's response to the situation.Several cattle at a stud property south of Rockhampton tested positive to the potentially deadly muscle-wasting sickness.
BJD is a soil-borne illness that poses no risk to human health, but is serious in cattle and has no effective treatment.
Mr McVeigh said the most immediate challenge was determining whether infected animals had been sold to other properties.
"(We are) focusing very much on eradicating or proving that those individual properties are free of concern as soon as possible," Mr McVeigh told the ABC.
"If not, and if there is a risk, we'll be looking at eradicating the risk and working out the best way to do that and ensuring that we are conscious of the operating and particularly the commercial needs of those individual operators."
Mr McVeigh said today's meeting would allow the department to provide a full briefing to affected graziers.
More than 70 agriculture department staff are believed to be working to determine the extent of the outbreak.
