Prevention
Government
NARRATOR: The Commonwealth Government is acting on a range of levels to protect Australia from the introduction of disease. Biosecurity Australia conducts import risk assessments to determine if it is safe to import fish and fish products into Australia. They also set conditions on these imports so that importation is safe.
SIMON BENNISON, National Aquaculture Council: I don’t think there’s any question that Australia benefits from its geographical isolation in regards to the clean, green images that it has in relation to aquatic animal diseases. But that is combined with a very well educated aquaculture fraternity that are conscious of the problems that disease does cause to their day to day business. There’s no doubt that there is an excellent working relationship between government and industry, in particular, to ensure that best practices are maintained from both an import point of view and, obviously, farm management practices.
NARRATOR: AQIS, the Australian Quarantine and Inspection Service, maintains our border inspection services to ensure that illegal imports and dangerous materials do not get into the country. In addition to that, staff within the Commonwealth Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry are implementing a range of projects to protect Australia’s aquaculture and fisheries.
EVA-MARIA BERNOTH, Aquatic Animal Health, Office of the Chief Vetinary Officer: The Commonwealth Government does not only assist in preventing the introduction of disease into the country, it also has mechanisms and initiatives in place to help minimise the impact of a disease once it’s here. I’d like to mention AQUAVETPLAN. AQUAVETPLAN is the Australian aquatic animal disease emergency plan. AQUAVETPLAN is really a series of manuals and some of the manuals are disease strategy manuals. They tell you what we would do if a particular disease were to enter Australia. For some diseases that might be trying to eradicate it, for other diseases it might be trying to live with it but prevent its spread to other areas in the country. Now the beauty about these disease strategy manuals is that they’ve been agreed upon by potentially affected industries and governments. So they save a lot of time, because when the situation occurs you already know how you’re going to tackle it. AQUAVETPLAN also consists of other manuals, such as disinfection or destruction manuals.
Another thing the Commonwealth Government is doing is they’re providing training. They are providing training manuals about disease recognition. There is, for instance, the field guide to identify, or at least tentatively identify, aquatic animal diseases. But the Commonwealth Government also provides training to industry and to state government personnel. We call these exercises ‘simulation exercises’ and they are very, very valuable, especially if we haven’t had major disease outbreak for a certain period of time. People do get a bit complacent. So it’s a very wise thing to do, to pretend there is an emergency and go through it. Usually what happens is certain holes or short comings are identified, then you can tackle them and put remedial action in place in peace time, when there is no real emergency.
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