Biosecurity requires constant vigilance

Australia needs to be vigilant about ensuring its current high level of scientific expertise in animal disease prevention and control is maintained in the future, according to speakers at CSIRO's Horizons in Livestock Sciences conference.

CSIRO's Chief, Livestock Industries, Mr Shaun Coffey, said today that while it was generally appreciated that exotic diseases such as Foot and Mouth Disease could devastate Australian agriculture, there was limited public understanding about what was involved in ensuring that such diseases were kept at bay.

"Fortunately Australia has a very credible repository of deep knowledge about those types of diseases and how to eradicate or control them should they ever breach our borders," Mr Coffey said.

"An excellent publicly-funded infrastructure also underpins the development of quarantine and other control policies which have been used to very good effect to prevent incursions here of major livestock diseases.

"The speakers highlighted the need for livestock researchers to continue to develop mechanisms to deal with current and future disease threats and to ensure the aims and outcomes of their work are broadly communicated nationally and internationally," Mr Coffey said.

Issues raised included: the need for high-level national capacity and coordination of research to develop new tools, concepts and skills; the need to maintain genuine technical expertise; and the need for continued publicly-funded development of new, credible knowledge from untainted expert opinion.

Item provided courtesy of The CSIRO