Page 17 - Australian Pork Newspaper

100 percent inspections test African swine fever defences
AUSTRALIA’S de- fences against a poten- tially devastating Afri- can swine fever breach have been tested dur- ing a month-long op- eration by biosecurity officers targeting trav- ellers from high-risk countries affected by the disease.
Agriculture Minis- ter Bridget McKenzie said Operation Con- way was a saturation exercise that involved the screening of all passengers and crew from identified flights for pork products and other biosecurity risk material.
“In all, 1021 passen- gers and crew were screened using a combi- nation of X-ray, manual inspection and detector dogs across five flights originating from coun- tries with confirmed cases of African swine fever,” Minister Mc- Kenzie said.
“Twenty-eight in- fringements and 17 written warnings were issued during the opera- tion, with 44kg of risk products seized, includ- ing 12kg of pork, chick- en and beef products.
“A number of pork products seized were
sent for ASF testing, with 22 percent return- ing a positive result.
“African swine fever is not present in Aus- tralia and our govern- ment is determined to keep it that way, to protect our agriculture industries, our environ- ment and our reputation as one of the world’s most sought-after sup- pliers of safe, clean and green food and fibre.
“African swine fever would have a substan- tial impact on Austral- ia’s $5.2 billion pork industry and the 34,000 jobs that depend on it in rural and regional com- munities.
“There’s no vaccine and no cure and it kills about 80 percent of the pigs it infects, so this exercise aimed to test the performance of cur- rent controls to deter the illegal importation by travellers of African swine fever risk prod- ucts.”
During October, Op- eration Conway saw dedicated teams of biosecurity officers deployed across four states and locations – Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane and Dar- win – supported at the
border by colleagues from Australian Border Force.
“The operation shows us that despite the risk to Australia, some peo- ple are still doing the wrong thing and bring- ing in products that could cause an outbreak here,” Minister McKen- ziesaid.
“The levels of non- compliance and other intelligence gathered in this operation are used to refine profiling as well as inform the sorts of screening activities we undertake so we can make sure we have the best measures in opera- tion to protect Australia from this terrible dis- ease.
“As well as height- ened screening for pork products at airports and mail centres, our gov- ernment has strength- ened compliance action at the airport, which has resulted in a significant increase in the number of infringement notices issued.
“We have also rede- ployed detector dogs to Cairns and Darwin and placed ASF signage at international airports to ensure passengers de- clare all pork items.”
Photo: Department of Ågriculture and Water Resources.
Technical Service Team member Douglas Chadambuka. Bendigo warehouse manager Paul Mckeon.
Stockyard Industries expands its Technical Service Team and welcomes new warehouse manager in Bendigo
STOCKYARD Indus- tries would like to wel- come Douglas Chadam- buka to the Technical Service Team.
Douglas has a diploma in Electrical and Elec- tronics Engineering and a Cert IV in Electrical Instrumentation.
Douglas has more than 20 years’ experience in installation, repair, maintenance and com- missioning of machines
in various industrial manufacturing indus- tries.
In his previous roles Douglas was responsi- ble for installation, fault finding, servicing and maintenance and provid- ing hands-on experience training to staff.
Douglas will be based in Toowoomba, Queensland for all your service needs and can be contacted on 0427 583 997 or doug
las@stockyardindustries. com
Stockyard would also like to welcome Paul Mc- Keon as the new ware- house manager at Ben- digo.
Paul has more than 23 years’ experience in ware- housing in hardware and retail.
With the growing busi- ness, Stockyard has bought a larger delivery vehicle to service custom-
ers on delivery runs in southern NSW, Victoria and South Australia.
The larger vehicle al- lows the team to add more equipment onto the runs.
With the rakes, the driv- ers can now can carry longer feedpipes.
After adding the soon- to-be-delivered alumin- ium trailer, Stockyard’s new vehicle will be able to carry more than 4.5 tonnes of products.
Stockyard’s new delivery vehicle.
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mob: 0412 888 485 rick.carter@kemin.com
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Rick Carter, PhD

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Australian Pork Newspaper, December 2019 – Page 17
Matt Henry
Country Manager (AgriFood Australia)
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