VICTORIAN producers will seek trading rights for sheep vaccinated against Ovine Johne's disease in a review of the new program.
Victorian Farmers Federation livestock president Ian Feldtmann said under the proposed national OJD management program vaccinated sheep should be able to go into proposed protected areas.
The new program would divide Australia into protected areas of low prevalence for the sheep wasting disease and control areas of higher prevalence.
But the new program's rules would allow only Victorian breeding sheep from protected areas or Market Assurance Program flocks to be traded into other protected areas or into South Australia.
"It is important that sheep from flocks with a history of vaccination should have the ability to trade into differing zones of Australia," Mr Feldtmann said.
"We need them to recognise that vaccinated sheep pose a very low risk."
A meeting of the VFF livestock group with the national OJD steering committee and other stakeholders on January 16 would discuss a strategy on OJD before the national OJD management committee met later in January or in early February, he said.
Mr Feldtmann said he would be pushing hard for the OJD vaccine to be used by the national industry.
National OJD steering committee chairman Frank Tobin said he did not disagree with the approach of allowing vaccinated sheep to move into proposed protected areas.
But he believed producers should be able to trade sheep anywhere with an animal health statement "without it being complicated by drawing lines on maps".
"It's not about access into these proposed protected areas - we've got to look at it from the buying perspective," Mr Tobin said.
