29 August 2017
Who does this notice affect?
This notice is of interest to countries with current market access to Australia for salmonid products and countries either producing or processing salmonid product with export interest for the Australian market. It is also of interest to the importers of salmonid products into Australia and producers of salmonids in Australia. Stakeholders will be able to make comments on the proposed changes, the closing date for comments is Friday, 1 December 2017.
Comments on the review should be submitted by Friday, 1 December 2017, to:
Animal Biosecurity
Department of Agriculture and Water Resources
GPO Box 858
CANBERRA ACT 2601
Telephone: +61 2 6272 4465
Facsimile: +61 2 6272 3856
Email: Animal
What has changed?
This notice is to inform industry that the Department of Agriculture and Water Resources is proposing changes that consolidate the import requirements for salmonid products sourced from approved countries.
Australia currently has three types of approvals for the import of salmonid product; two for uncooked salmonid product and one for thermally treated salmonid product.
Uncooked
- Source country approval is applied where a country has been formally assessed and approved as a source of raw salmonid material from which salmonid products are further processed and exported to Australia.
- Processing country approval is applied where a country has been formally assessed and approved to process salmonid product derived from raw salmonid material sourced from an approved source country to meet Australia’s import requirements and export the processed product to Australia.
Thermally treated
- Thermally treated approval is applied to countries where the Competent Authority (CA) has been recognised by Australia to regulate processing under control of the CA in accordance with minimum time/temperature parameters prescribed.
A country can have approval as both a source and processing county.
The proposed changes consolidate the import conditions for each approved source (excluding New Zealand) and processing country. It will allow for all source countries to obtain salmonid products from other approved source countries for further processing and export to Australia. This makes the import policy consistent between all approved source and processing countries. Read more on the proposed changes to import conditions for approved source and processing countries for salmon, other than if thermally treated.
Australia also has import conditions for thermally treated salmonid products which currently require the same import conditions as for uncooked salmonid product, with the addition of a heat and time treatment. Revision of the current import conditions for thermally treated salmonid products is required on the basis that the disease risks are already addressed through the heat treatment and that any additional measures are over restrictive. Read more on the proposed changes to import conditions for thermally treated salmonid products.
These proposed changes are consistent with the findings of the 1999 Import Risk Analysis on Non-viable Salmonids and Non-salmonid Marine Finfish (1999 IRA) and the Animal Quarantine Policy Memorandum 1999/96 and 2000/26. Source countries of raw salmonid product have already undergone a comprehensive evaluation of their animal health control systems and have been approved by Australia as a competent authority. These modifications pose no greater risk to Australia’s biosecurity.
Further information
The department intends to announce changes in the import conditions as a BICON Alert. BICON Alerts provide information on changes to import requirements and is frequently updated. Importers are encouraged to monitor this page to access new information on import requirements.
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