Maintaining and enhancing market access for Australian seafood is critical for future industry growth. SafeFish makes a significant contribution to this by carrying out three types of projects:
1. Food safety incident responses. The SafeFish partners come together during each incident to provide industry and government with immediate technical information required to respond to the incident. Subsequently, technical input is provided to update policies for prevention of similar incidents and respond to them should they recur. Appropriate technical responses reduce the impact of food safety incidents and ensure better outcomes for future management.
2. Technical input to inter-government consultations on food regulations and market access. It is essential for the Australian seafood industry to participate in consultations such as Codex to ensure that proposed new, or modified, regulations are pragmatic and cost-effective for the Australian seafood industry. It is far easier to influence standards under development than after they have been finalised. Similarly, it is essential for the seafood industry to stay in close contact with Food Safety Australia and New Zealand (FSANZ) when domestic food safety regulations are reviewed.
3. Proactive research, risk analyses and training. The safety of Australian seafood is not negotiable in domestic and international markets. Over recent years SafeFish has conducted many activities to assist the industry anticipate and minimize food safety risks. The objective of the activities has always been to identify and mitigate risks before they cause a problem, or to grow knowledge to enable us to improve our risk management in a cost effective manner.

Following the work of the AAWWG the four aquatic sectors now have a range of findings that, when combined, produce a series of practical outcomes and materials for circulation and use within the various sectors.

The take-up of these guidance materials now lies with the aquatic sectors to which they apply; commercial capture fishing, aquaculture, recreational fishing, ornamental fish and restaurants holding live seafood.

There is a need to undertake a workshop (or a series of workshops) to determine how well these previously developed materials are being used by industry and identify the reasons why there is not adoption (if this is the case). The workshop(s) will then provide advice and guidance to FRDC as to whether there is a need for fund further work to ‘plug any gaps’ or modify any materials that have been found to be difficult to use/adopt, or whether there is a need to assess industry barriers to change.