Aquatic animal health training scheme - Updating and improving existing practical skills and knowledge to support the effective delivery of vocational aquatic animal health
There is a lack of practical skills for on farm fish health investigation and disease management. The National Aquatic Animal Health Technical Working Group (NAAH-TWG) April 2008 workshop highlighted - 'There is ongoing concern that there are too few suitably trained and accredited aquatic animal health professionals to service Australia’s fisheries and aquaculture industries and to ensure succession to a new generation of aquatic animal health professionals.' More recently Dr John Humphrey's presentation at the 2010 Australasian Aquaculture Conference 'Disease investigation in finfish - demystifying the diagnostic process' discussed the need at an industry level for an improvement in investigating fish health skills across the aquaculture industry.
Every state of Australia has an aquaculture industry which requires effective health investigation and disease management. Across Australia aquatic animal health training is being delivered to industry and future stakeholders by vocational trainers using units from the National Seafood Industry Package. Aquatic animal health training is also occurring on the farm informally by other industry professionals.
There is a need to bring together those delivering training, to allow them to update and improve their knowledge and practical skills to enable better delivery and ultimately better outcomes for skill development in farm fish health investigation and disease management to support Australia’s fishing and aquaculture industry.
Final report
SCRC: Seafood CRC: Postdoctoral Research Fellow - SARDI Shellfish Food Safety
Developing Code of Practice frameworks and assessing the need for an Australian Standard on Responsible Fishing Practices
A recent FRDC report on Community Perceptions of the Australian Fishing Industry (2011) identified that only 27 percent of those surveyed believe that commercial fishing is sustainable - a similar result was found in surveys in 2003. This finding reflects very poorly on commercial fishing despite the considerable resources that have been invested over the past decade on changes to fishing and management practices. It is evident that consumersc remain largely unaware of the significant progress that has been made. This project will address an element of these consumer concerns about Australian fishers, responsibly fishing.
Consumers need to be able to justify support for the Australian fishers through a framework they recognise, such as a benchmark standard. A core problem is that most sectors of the commercial fishing industry do not have an appropriate framework under which they can promote their responsible fishing practices to consumers. The current mechanisms are fragmented and wide ranging which is confusing for the fishers. In addition, the cost associated with many of the higher level certification schemes are beyond the capacity of many fishery sectors, particularly the smaller inshore sectors. This project provides the extension and adoption framework to resolve this problem at the fishery sector, regional or at individual fisher level - no other scheme offers this breadth of scope. It is envisiaged that this will be a low cost initiative affordable by industry
This Draft Australian Standard is intended to be used as a basis for a certification scheme of individual operators and link to a future Chain of Custody Australian Standard which will go beyond resale.
This project will also deliver the required extension and adoption of many other previous investments by FRDC, in particular, industry codes of practice and ESD initiatives.
Final report
standardisation, including the UK Responsible Fishing Vessel Scheme, Oceanwatch Master Fishers Programme and the South Australian Rock Lobster Clean and Green standard. The review led to a change of project focus to develop code of practice templates for fisheries that were compliant with domestic and international regulatory and normative frameworks. Discussion with stakeholders indicated that there was little demand for an Australian Responsible Fishing Standard, but the templates could be a basis for the development of a standard in the future if required.