CROPLIFE Australia has welcomed the draft report by the independent panel conducting the review of Australia's agricultural and veterinary chemical regulation framework.
CropLife Australia chief executive officer Matthew Cossey said the review was an opportunity to modernise the agricultural chemical regulatory system, deliver genuine efficiency gains and ensure Australia maintained a world-class scientifically and technically competent regulator.
He said the Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority (APVMA) played a crucial role in ensuring Australian farmers had access to safe, effective and modern crop protection products that enabled them to farm more productively, profitably and sustainably.
"These products are also crucial for our nation's environmental land managers combatting threats to our natural environment," Mr Cossey said.
"Ensuring Australia's complex regulatory framework is able to adapt to the fast pace of innovation in plant science is critical to enabling the APVMA to become a next generation regulator.
"The regulatory framework must be considered in its entirety to ensure changes are well considered and add real improvement.
"Australia's farmers and the community need and deserve a world-class regulator in this critically important area."
The plant science industry's products directly underpin more than $20 billion a year of Australian farming production.
"This draft report goes some way in suggesting a range of reform initiatives and CropLife and our members will give consideration to the recommendations over the coming months ahead of a formal submission in response," Mr Cossey said.
"Only recommendations that genuinely improve, strengthen and modernise the entire regulatory system will be supported by CropLife."