Ownership of intellectual property rights

Summary

The yam scale, Aspidiella hartii, has been identified as a quarantine pest requiring measures to manage the risks to a very low level in order to achieve Australia’s appropriate level of protection. Ginger rhizomes must be subject to phytosanitary inspection to ensure that consignments are free of scales or any other regulated articles. Where quarantine pests or other regulated articles are detected, consignments will be subject to appropriate remedial action.

Australia has a system of operational procedures in place to ensure quarantine standards are met. These include: provisions for traceability to enable tracing of consignments to critical points of the pathway; registration of export farms and packing houses; packaging and labelling requirements to ensure material is not contaminated by quarantine pests or other regulated articles; and pre-export phytosanitary certification to document the above provisions.

This draft report provides risk assessments for pests of ginger and proposed phytosanitary procedures to allow interested parties to provide comments and submissions to DAFF Biosecurity within the consultation period of 60 days.

Introduction

1.1Australia’s biosecurity policy framework

The import risk analysis (IRA) process is an important part of Australia’s biosecurity policies. It enables the Australian Government to formally consider the risks that could be associated with proposals to import new products into Australia. If the risks are found to exceed Australia’s appropriate level of protection (ALOP), risk management measures are proposed to reduce the risks to an acceptable level. But, if it is not possible to reduce the risks to an acceptable level, then no trade will be allowed.

Successive Australian Governments have maintained a conservative, but not a zero risk, approach to the management of biosecurity risks. This approach is expressed in terms of Australia’s ALOP, which reflects community expectations through government policy and is currently described as providing a high level of protection aimed at reducing risk to a very low level, but not to zero.

Australia’s IRAs are undertaken by the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry Biosecurity, hereafter referred to as DAFF Biosecurity, using teams of technical and scientific experts in relevant fields, and involves consultation with stakeholders at various stages during the process. DAFF Biosecurity provides recommendations for animal and plant quarantine policy to Australia’s Director of Animal and Plant Quarantine (the Secretary of the Australian Government Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry). The Director, or delegate, is responsible for determining whether or not an importation can be permitted under the Quarantine Act 1908, and if so, under what conditions.

More information about Australia’s biosecurity framework is provided in Appendix C of this report and in the Import Risk Analysis Handbook 2007 (update 2011) located on the DAFF website http://daff.gov.au.