Australia’s agriculture industry is calling for stronger penalties for breaching biosecurity controls after a woman avoided jail for illegally importing more than 62 tonnes of meat and produce from Thailand to distribute on Sydney’s black market.<\/p>\n
The items, including raw and cooked pork, frogs, edible insects, beef, chicken, fish, raw prawns and insect-infested fruit, were intercepted at the border in 2021 after a tip-off.<\/p>\n
The woman failed to accurately declare the products and on June 11 was sentenced by a District Court judge to a 24-month intensive corrections order and 150 hours of community service.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
DAFF intercepted the illegal imports after a tip-off. (Supplied: Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry)<\/p>\n
Tests on the goods showed positive results for diseases, including African swine fever, Newcastle disease and white spot disease, raising concerns across the Australian agricultural industry.<\/p>\n
Australian Pork Limited CEO Margo Andrae said the introduction of African swine fever could cost the Australian industry $2.5 billion.<\/p>\n
“Australia has incredibly strict biosecurity laws for a very good reason. We don’t have the diseases that are out there globally,” she said.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Margo Andrae says biosecurity breaches pose a huge threat to Australian producers. (Supplied: Cattle Council of Australia )<\/p>\n
The Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry (DAFF) said the items were tested for trace presence of diseases and positive results did not necessarily indicate a viable presence.<\/p>\n
Insect-infested fruit was also seized and subjected to cold storage treatment before inspection.<\/p>\n
DAFF’s Compliance and Enforcement Division first assistant secretary Anna Brezzo said the detections did not indicate broader outbreaks within Australia.<\/p>\n
Prawn industry concerned<\/p>\n
The detection of white spot disease in the items also worried the Australian prawn industry.<\/p>\n
Australian Prawn Farmers Association executive officer Kim Hooper said white spot, while harmless to humans, had the potential to decimate Australia’s prawn industry.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Kim Hooper has renewed calls to ban prawn imports. (ABC News: Tom Forbes)<\/p>\n
Within Australia, the movement of raw prawns from locations where white spot has been detected is banned, but raw prawns can be imported with a permit from countries with white spot disease.<\/p>\n
Ms Hooper described the regulations as a “double standard” and called for a consistent approach to imported prawns.<\/p>\n
“Fishers and farmers are doing all the right things in that containment area,” she said.<\/p>\n
“They’re not moving raw product out of that containment area. It has to be cooked.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The white spot virus doesn’t harm humans but is deadly to prawns. (Supplied: DigsFish services)<\/p>\n
“But we’re not seeing that same level of biosecurity at the border \u2014 we’re not seeing only cooked [prawns] coming across the Australian border.<\/p>\n
“So it just beggars belief about how this is actually happening and why our own businesses in Australia are being treated differently to what importers are.”<\/p>\n
Calls for stronger penalties<\/p>\n
Ms Hooper said the penalties for the woman did not “reflect the scale of the threat” from the illegal importation.<\/p>\n
“This was a calculated operation involving false documentation and product substitution. The consequences should be equally serious,” she said.<\/p>\n
“The government needs to step up. There needs to be increased penalties for deliberate breaches such as this.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Raw prawns were among the items intercepted. (Supplied: Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry)<\/p>\n
“They need to close the regulatory gaps that allow these black market operations to exploit our system and they need to modernise the border protection systems.”<\/p>\n
Ms Andre agreed stronger penalties were needed to deter further illegal import attempts.<\/p>\n
“We need a really strong deterrent for these people. They’re putting our industries at risk,”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
she said.<\/p>\n
“[It’s] great to see that DAFF caught them, but now we need the judicial systems to actually really put the full strength of the penalties in place.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Australia’s agriculture industry is calling for stronger penalties for breaching biosecurity controls after a woman avoided jail for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":221724,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3843],"tags":[3971,87567,186,77585,6180,18185,21371,728,1203,5703,14929,87566,87565,70,731,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-221723","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-agriculture","9":"tag-aquaculture","10":"tag-australia","11":"tag-biosecurity","12":"tag-border","13":"tag-control","14":"tag-diseases","15":"tag-environment","16":"tag-food","17":"tag-fruit","18":"tag-pests","19":"tag-pork","20":"tag-prawns","21":"tag-science","22":"tag-thailand","23":"tag-uk","24":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/221723","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=221723"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/221723\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/221724"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=221723"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=221723"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=221723"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}