The Department of Agriculture and Water Resources is seeking expressions of interest for the revision of the following AQUAVETPLAN Disease strategy manual:
1. White Spot Disease

The Australian Aquatic Veterinary Emergency Plan (AQUAVETPLAN) is a series of manuals that outline Australia’s approach to national disease preparedness and propose the technical response and control strategies to be activated in a national aquatic animal disease emergency.
To assist potential applicants in preparing their expression of interest:
• Current AQUAVETPLAN manuals, including the current version of the AQUAVETPLAN manuals for White spot disease, is available on the Department’s website at AQUAVETPLAN.
• Author guidelines, including the latest template for AQUAVETPLAN manuals, can be provided electronically on request from the Aquatic Pest and Health Policy section (contact details below).
Terms of Reference
The White spot disease manual was first published in 2005, and the second version was published in 2013. This manual requires revision to reflect new scientific knowledge, and to ensure that strategies used for White Spot disease control purposes reflect current ‘best-practice’ approaches.

A White Spot Disease R&D Needs Workshop held in Brisbane on Wednesday 18 October 2017 providing a forum to unpack research and other issues amongst industry with respect to the detection of WSSV. The government and industry response at the meeting demonstrated gaps in the wild harvest sector’s knowledge of biosecurity concepts.

There is a need to greatly increase industry capacity to respond to biosecurity threats. This project proposal is a people development project aimed at extending the work of the BILO and significantly boost industry preparedness.

The purpose of this project application is to address the information and education gaps identified amongst the wild catch commercial fishing sector. In consultation with industry stakeholders and the QSIA, Millstream Productions have been approached to developed a series of video clip production plans (attached to this application).

The Biosecurity Act 2014 (Qld) section 23 sub-sections states that industry businesses have an obligation (a general biosecurity obligation) to take all reasonable and practical measures to prevent or minimise the biosecurity risk. This project will help industry to do this by offering an information platform that is tailored to industry needs and will provide video and written material to educate industry regarding its biosecurity obligations.

This project has broad based support from industry, biosecurity experts and government (letters of support attached).

1) Industry – Marshall Betzel, President, Queensland Seafood Marketers Association (QSMA).
2) Biosecurity experts – Dr Matt Landos and Dr Ben Diggles.
3) Government – Dr Stephen Wesche, Planning and Policy Manager, White Spot Disease Program, Biosecurity Queensland, Department of Agriculture and Fisheries.

The project compliments the work developed by the BILO. The linking of paper and video material will provide industry with multiple platforms to engage on the critical issue of biosecurity.