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Foot-and-mouth disease
All livestock producers will be familiar with managing parasites. Monitoring, preventing spread and treatment are routine practices on many farms. Rightly so, too, as parasite burdens slow the growth of animals, negatively impact their health and welfare, and reduce productivity.
Many important crop pests and diseases such as rusts, viruses, slugs, snails, mites and aphids survive in the green bridge and affect emerging crops.
You can minimise the biosecurity risks when introducing new planting material by implementing a few simple procedures to your routine.
If you sometimes feel like you are drowning in paperwork, be reassured that keeping records is a genuinely useful biosecurity practice. If you ever find yourself caught up in a pest or disease incursion, the records you keep will be invaluable both to you and other producers in your industry.
Serpentine leafminer (Liriomyza huidobrensis) is a new pest to arrive in Australia, first reported in NSW in Greater Sydney in October 2020, and then also in the Fassifern Valley Queensland. Research shows this pest is that it is resistant to the chemical treatments used to control other leafminers. Therefore, an integrated pest management (IPM) regime is important to control the pest.
Several years on from the arrival of African swine fever (ASF) in Asia, the deadly pig disease remains right on Australia’s doorstep. With the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations issuing a heightened risk alert for the region, Animal Health Australia (AHA) is urging land managers and especially pig owners in Australia to be incredibly disciplined in how they manage their property biosecurity.
When it comes to on-farm biosecurity it is often said that if it moves, it can carry diseases, pests and weeds. The movement of people, vehicles and equipment creates a high risk of a biosecurity incursion, second only to the introduction of new plants, livestock and farm supplies (such as feed). With governments encouraging people to travel within Australia (despite constantly changing COVID-19 restrictions), Animal Health Australia (AHA) is encouraging all people to consider the impact their actions have on rural environments.
