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Industry
Industry
PROJECT NUMBER • 2018-102
PROJECT STATUS:
COMPLETED

Understanding Ostreid herpesvirus type 1 risk: alternative hosts and in situ hybridisation

South Australia (SA) has a large edible oyster industry primarily growing Pacific oysters (Crassostrea gigas). The industry is regionally-based, an important employer and a substantial contributor to regional economies. Pacific oyster mortality syndrome (POMS) is a serious infectious disease of C....
ORGANISATION:
Flinders University

SafeFish 2018-2021

Project number: 2018-004
Project Status:
Completed
Budget expenditure: $812,452.02
Principal Investigator: Natalie R. Dowsett
Organisation: SARDI Food Safety and Innovation
Project start/end date: 30 Jun 2018 - 29 Jun 2021
Contact:
FRDC

Need

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.

Objectives

1. To deliver robust food safety research and advice to industry and regulators that underpins Australia's reputation as a producer of safe seafood.
2. To maintain and enhance the capabilities in Australia to provide that research and advice in a cost effective, efficient and timely manner.

Report

ISBN: 978-1-876007-37-9
Authors: Natalie Dowsett Stephen Pahl Navreet Malhi Andreas Seger and Alison Turnbull
Report • 2021-06-30 • 828.13 KB
2018-004-DLD.pdf

Summary

SafeFish is an initiative that was developed by the South Australian Research and Development Institute (SARDI) in 2010 (Project 2010-752-10: SafeFish - Seafood Trade Expert Panel funded by the Australian Seafood CRC until 2015). Following this, the Fisheries Research and Development Corporation (FRDC) and several industry bodies provided funding under two separate grants: Project 2015-212 which ran from 2015-2018 and the current grant Project 2018-004 which ran from 2018-2021. Since its inception, SafeFish has successfully enabled seafood industry sectors to respond in a coordinated and professional manner to technical trade and market access impediments that arise, especially in relation to food safety and hygiene. It provides industry and government departments with access to technical and scientific capability to manage known risks and assists to identify and address new risks and market access barriers that emerge. 
 
Over the past three years (2018-2021) SafeFish has delivered robust food safety research and advice to industry and regulators to underpin Australia’s reputation as a producer of safe seafood, and by maintaining and enhancing the capabilities of SafeFish to provide that research and advice in a cost effective, efficient and timely manner. The increased support from the seafood industry to continue to fund SafeFish for a further three years is testament to the success of this project, and the need for such work in Australia. 
 
Industry
PROJECT NUMBER • 2021-018
PROJECT STATUS:
CURRENT
ORGANISATION:
Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies (IMAS) Hobart

Development of resources and equipment to enable best practice in the humane dispatch of sharks caught by commercial fishers in the NT

Project number: 2022-028
Project Status:
Current
Budget expenditure: $148,400.00
Principal Investigator: Ben Diggles
Organisation: DigsFish Services Pty Ltd
Project start/end date: 31 Dec 2022 - 29 Dec 2023
Contact:
FRDC

Need

The so called pragmatic approach to the welfare of aquatic animals (Arlinghaus et al. 2007) measures welfare status using a variety of well-established, un-controversial physiological and functional parameters (Rose et al. 2014, Browman et al. 2019). For example, all finfish, crustaceans and cephalopods can experience stress, which can lead to poor welfare outcomes (Rose et al. 2014). From an animal welfare perspective, the overall aim to maximise fish welfare during capture is to minimise stress within the constraint of practices inherent to the relevant fishing sector (Mazur and Bodsworth 2022).
Using this pragmatic approach, the Aquatic Animal Welfare Working Group (AAWWG) which was formed under the Australian Animal Welfare Strategy (AAWS, 2005-2014), developed a range of Overarching Welfare Principles which related to finfish harvested from the wild in commercial fishing industries.
Out of the eight Overarching Principles developed by the AAWWG, as pointed out by Mazur and Bodsworth (2022) the three that are most relevant to the commercial wild harvest industry are:
1. Timely handling from capture to death is essential to minimise stress;
2. Capture methods should be designed to minimise the capture of unwanted species
3. Any fish selected for harvest should be killed as rapidly as possible, by humane means suitable for the species.
To address the legislative issues under the new Act, meet current and future fish welfare challenges, and maintain their social license to fish, commercial fishers targeting sharks in the NT need to develop workable and effective standards for handling and dispatching sharks which can be recognised and prescribed under the new Regulations.
Since shark fisheries are specialist fisheries which were not covered by the AAWWG during the AAWS, there is a need to develop specific resources to assist the industry with humane dispatch of sharks.
Science shows that brain destruction by pithing or “iki-jime” is the fastest way to dispatch finfish, resulting in the lowest levels of stress and maximising the quality and shelf life of the resulting fish product (Poli et al. 2005, Diggles 2015). However, the brains of sharks are small and vary in location between species, which is why this project is being proposed and is necessary to determine the brain location of the sharks most commonly captured in the NT shark fishery, and then examine various methods of rapidly destroying the brain, in order to develop guidelines and best practice protocols for their humane dispatch. Importantly, it should be noted that this is an industry driven project.

References

Arlinghaus R, Cooke SJ, Schwab A, Cowx IG (2007). Fish welfare: A challenge to the feelings based approach, with implications for recreational fishing. Fish and Fisheries 8: 57-71.

Browman HI, Cooke SJ, Cowx IG, Derbyshire SWG, Kasumyan A, Key B, Rose JD, Schwab A, Skiftesvik AB, Stevens ED, Watson CA, Arlinghaus R (2019). Welfare of aquatic animals: where things are, where they are going, and what it means for research, aquaculture, recreational angling, and commercial fishing. ICES Journal of Marine Science 76: 82–92. doi:10.1093/icesjms/fsy067

Diggles BK (2015). Development of resources to promote best practice in the humane dispatch of finfish caught by recreational fishers. Fisheries Management and Ecology DOI: 10.1111/fme.12127

Mazur N, Bodsworth A (2022). Practicing aquatic animal welfare: Identifying and mitigating obstacles to uptake and adoption by the Australian Seafood Industry. Final Report for FRDC Project No 2019-023, March 2022. 60 pgs.

Poli BM, Parisi G, Scappini F, Zampacavallo G (2005). Fish welfare and quality as affected by presaughter and slaughter management. Aquaculture International 13: 29-49.

Rose JD, Arlinghaus R, Cooke SJ, Diggles BK, Sawynok W, Stevens ED, Wynne CD (2014). Can fish really feel pain? Fish and Fisheries 15: 97–133.

Objectives

1. Obtain all relevant permits. Review of literature (primary and grey) and current NT industry practice to inform Objective 2.
2. Collect at least 3 representative specimens (small, medium large) of each of the main shark species (up to 12) encountered by the commercial fishing industry in the Northern Territory (NT), and precisely identify their anatomical brain location.
3. Assess the effectiveness of various different tools and techniques for dispatch of small and large sharks (percussive stunning (blunt trauma inflicted using a baseball bat) vs spinal section vs shooting vs pneumatic captive bolt gun vs cartridge powered captive bolt gun vs spring loaded captive bolt gun vs (depending on OH&S requirements) electrical stunning.
4. Update the existing code(s) of practice adopted by the commercial fishing industry in the NT to include the best practice information on dispatch of sharks as prescribed under the new Regulations (Animal Protection Act 2018 (‘the new Act’) and the Animal Protection Regulations 2020 ‘the new Regulations’ in the NT.
5. Update existing electronic extension resources (www.ikijime.com, Ikijime Tool phone applications) to include the new information on location of shark brains.
6. Extend this information to the commercial fishing industries in the NT.
People
Industry
PROJECT NUMBER • 2017-203
PROJECT STATUS:
COMPLETED

Risk from Diarrhetic Shellfish Toxins and Dinophysis to the Australian Shellfish Industry

This study first examined DSTs in spiked and naturally contaminated shellfish - Sydney Rock Oysters (Saccostrea glomerata), Pacific Oysters (Magallana gigas/Crassostrea gigas), Blue Mussels (Mytilus galloprovincialis) and Pipis (Plebidonax deltoides/Donax deltoides), using LC-MS/MS ...
ORGANISATION:
University of Technology Sydney (UTS)
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