Biosecurity plans in place for outbreak says DPIRD's Mia Carbon

Department of Primary Industries and Regional Development (DPIRD) executive director biosecurity Mia Carbon said plans were in place to support industry resilience and recovery.

Dr Carbon said while much preparedness work for emergency animal disease outbreaks had been done in Australia, there was always room for improvement.

She labelled industries and supply chains as a "critical part" of this work.

"DPIRD is working closely with industry to raise awareness of disease threats and ensure livestock producers are well prepared to respond effectively and efficiently in the event of an outbreak," Dr Carbon said.

"Emergency animal disease outbreaks in Australia are managed under the national Emergency Animal Disease Response Agreement (EADRA).

"The EADRA commits all signatories, including industry, to preparedness and early detection activities.

"This includes good on-property biosecurity, reporting any suspicion of disease, and maintaining good traceability."

In the event of an outbreak, WA will use the framework set in the nationally agreed response guidance documents - the AusVetPlan.

Industries and governments have worked closely together in the production and review of such documents.

Dr Carbon said WA had tested the national and State plans, as part of both national and State-based exercises.

She said WA industry stakeholders and DPIRD staff had participated in scenario-based exercises for diseases, such as African swine fever, FMD and Avian influenza.

"With the increase in biosecurity risk with FMD and lumpy skin circulating in Indonesia, there will be a renewed focus on the response guidance documents and planning for these diseases across industry and government," Dr Carbon said.

Traceability has also been labelled as critical for responding to a disease outbreak in a timely and effective way.

Already, WA's cattle industry uses individual eID tags in animals.

However, across most of Australia's sheep industry traceability is "mob-based".

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Dr Carbon said this was one of the 11 issues identified in a 2011 review of Australia's preparedness for the threat of FMD.

She said individual eID of sheep was one of the key priorities for improving disease preparedness in Australia and was a recommendation from the National Traceability Enhancement Working Group.

"Individual eID allows for rapid identification and tracing of individual animals between properties and through the supply chain to see where animals have been and when.

"This also allows identification of other animals, which may have been in contact with a disease.

"Knowing what stock may be affected and where they are supports rapid and targeted management of stock, including movement controls, quarantine, testing and diagnostics, containment and eradication.

"This increases the chance of effectively containing or eradicating a disease, minimises the impact on industries and communities and provides data to support market access."

Dr Carbon said rapid traceability relied on people receiving stock at each step of the supply chain, including saleyards, processors and other producers, scanning animals and uploading the identification and consignment details to the National Livestock Identification System (NLIS) database within the required 48 hours of arrival at a new property.

She said the NLIS database could then be interrogated for records of movements between locations within a date range, as well as being able to provide a life history for an individual animal where they are individually identified.