nation of Australia. In the neighboring country of Indonesia, more than 450,000 cases of foot and mouth disease have been detected in livestock. Now, Australia’s farmers and ranchers are on high alert. Authorities have suggested they may respond to the disease with even more intensity than Covid. If even a single case of FMD is found in Australia, they say, it could lead to a lockdown of both animals and humans. Of course, with a warning like that, what’s the chance that they don’t find a case of FMD, one way or another? You know that plenty of the people in government want it to happen. For Australia’s left-wing government, a pandemic for ranchers is another chance to blame every problem on climate change. It’s a chance to put a bunch of farmers out of business and further their plan to eradicate meat entirely. And speaking of eradicating meat, in the state of Victoria, where Melbourne is, the left-wing government is pursuing legislation that would ban hunters from sharing the meat obtained through hunting, an obvious prelude to just banning hunting itself. Maria Zeee is our Australian correspondent