The Australian prawn farming sector provides significant income to regional economies, particularly parts of Queensland. The entrance of an exotic disease can potentially cripple the industry. Hence, it is prudent to reduce the risks of disease incursion domestically and on-farm. 

Since 2010, a number of disease outbreaks have been reported within the prawn farming industry in South-East Asia. This highlights the importance of biosecurity (the practice of disease prevention and management) within the industry. The summit assisted in raising awareness of exotic diseases and strategies to prevent and control emergency disease events. 

Engagement of the industry for on-going disease surveillance is important. The summit provided further education to improve current practices on-farm to aid in disease surveillance. As the project had an interactive framework, it encouraged industry to help identify areas of improvement in the current system. 

The summit was run on the 31st July 2012, and provided a platform for the collaboration of government workers, farmers, researchers and industry. Approximately 35 people were in attendance for the biosecurity summit, and were provided with case studies and examples of the consequence of emergency aquatic animal disease outbreaks suffered by international industry. The necessity of disease prevention was the focus throughout the summit as the limitations of treatment and control were detailed. Applied prevention measures for Australian farms were highlighted. 

Keywords: Prawn Superpowers Summit; aquatic animal diseases.

Prior to the initiation of this project, it was recognised that while State/Territory, as well as Commonwealth, legislation is well-developed for the management of traditional stock animal diseases, legislation has not addressed adequately issues concerning aquatic animal diseases and their control. Thus animal health policy makers established a working party to assess the effectiveness of State/Territory aquatic animal disease legislation in the face of hypothetical, severe fisheries disease outbreaks in public waters, aquaculture sites, in finfish and in aquatic invertebrates.

Accordingly, the Working Party visited each State/Territory to discuss with those officials responsible for managing aquatic animal disease outbreaks, the current status of State legislation, whether the legislation is appropriate and whether the State has adequate resources and legislative support to manage effectively aquatic animal disease emergencies. In this way the strengths and weaknesses of each State/Territory with regard to aquatic animal disease preparedness were identified for further consideration by the local authorities. Over the past two years significant progress on aquatic animal health policy development at the Commonwealth and State/Territory levels has been made and is outlined in this report.

Major outcomes of the project include a significant raising of the profile of aquatic animal disease. At both State/Territory and Commonwealth levels the issue of aquatic animal disease, even in the face of the emergence of newer fisheries industries and a growth in fisheries production, had attracted relatively little attention and hence few resources. During the course of the project, there have been interaction with other projects and activities, coordinated by the Department of Primary Industries and Energy, which has had a synergistic effect on the progress of the issue. Recently, there has been very significant progress on aquatic animal health policy development at State/Territory and Commonwealth Government levels.

In the majority of States/Territories, either new or revised legislation has been enacted, is currently being enacted or current legislation is being reviewed to determine whether revised/new legislation is required. Thus, most of the States/Territories have addressed, or are addressing, the legislative issue.

In addition to ensuring appropriate legislation is in place, each State/Territory is responsible for ensuring the legislation is invoked as needed and effective management of aquatic animal disease emergencies is undertaken. Regardless of the scale of the incident the State/Territory should be notified, and should then make an assessment of appropriate action, ensuring that such action is in accordance with national policy.

Management of an aquatic animal disease emergency will require a collaborative approach and will, primarily, involve expertise in aquatic animal biology and aquaculture systems which would normally reside in State Departments of Fisheries or the equivalent, as well as expertise in animal diseases and epizootiology normally available from State Departments of Agriculture or the equivalent. In some cases, this expertise resides within one department (e.g. Departments of Primary Industries and Fisheries) and coordination of the response presents little difficulty. In other cases, the expertise is not centralised and coordination of the response becomes a more complex issue.

A major achievement, clearly evident, was the bringing together of the principal decision makers required in the event of an aquatic animal disease emergency. In some States/Territories these meetings represented the first instance in which this had occurred for the purposes of aquatic animal disease emergency contingency planning. Hence, together with the respective roles and responsibilities, important linkages were immediately put in place which later formed the basis for development of an action plan. In each State/Territory, a theoretical scenario, an aquatic animal disease emergency relevant to the particular State/Territory, was presented and worked through to its conclusion. This illustrated the resources, responsibilities and roles required for effective management of the emergency.