Proposed Australian Animal Welfare Standards and Guidelines – Exhibited Animals Consultation Regulation Impact Statement March 2014

A3.4 – Incremental cost of developing and implementing plans, procedures or program under Clauses –S1.8, S2.7, S2.8, 2.12, S3.18, S3.19, S5.1, S5.9, S6.1, S7.1, S8.1, S9.1, S10.5, S11.6

Under the proposed animal welfare standards there would be a requirement for operators to maintain and implement:

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  procedures that address the circumstances in which staff can access and enter enclosures used to hold dangerous animals (S1.8);
  
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  procedures to reasonably prevent an animal escaping (S2.7) (except SA exotics);
  
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  procedures for recapturing any escaped animal (S2.8) (except QLD);
  
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  procedures for emergencies (S2.12) (except QLD);
  
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  plan for dealing with incidents including emergency evacuations (S3.18) with details of the plan in (S3.19);
  
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  procedures for indicating how to maintain the acceptable range of an environmental parameter (S5.1)
  
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  program for the control of insects, parasites and vertebrate pests (S5.9) (except WA);
  
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  plan for animal collection management (S6.1) (except QLD and SA exotics);
  
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  procedures for:( i) the use of euthanasia; and (ii) appropriate methods of euthanasia for each animal held (S7.1);
  
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  procedure for the safe and expedient capture and restraint of animals (S8.1) (except WA and SA exotics);
  
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  procedures regarding the health, safety and behavioural needs of the animal during training (S9.1);
  
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  procedures for interactive programs (S10.5); and
  
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  plan for animal transport (S11.6) (except QLD and SA exotics).
  

Furthermore, it is assumed that such plans, procedures and programs would already be provided by 95% of operators and therefore would affect 5% of operators and would involve a time cost of 21 days (i.e. one day for the development and half a day for the implementation of procedures, plans or program (14 in all). Taking 7.5hrs as a typical working day, this would require a total one-off time cost of 157.5hrs per affected facility in NSW, VIC, NT, TAS, and ACT¹³⁶. As discussed in Part A2.9 of Appendix 2 the hourly charge out rate for a program administrator is taken to be $101.52 including salary on-costs and overhead costs. This rate is used to determine the hourly time cost of plans, procedures and programs.

As shown in Table A3.7, the estimated one-off cost of developing and implementing plans procedures and programs over 10 years would be $0.14m in present value 2012-13 dollars. Approximately, 86% of the cost would be incurred by small facilities, with facilities in NSW, VIC, WA and QLD affected in particular.