We are looking forward to seeing many of you at Member Engagement Week in Canberra which kicks off on Monday 25th of September. Our team has prepared a week of workshops and forums with a focus on farm biosecurity, EADRA, the resourcing of our biosecurity system to ensure the continued success and delivery of strong animal health systems.

This month we have finalised the monitoring and evaluation of our mid-term review of AHA’s five-year Strategy; our delivery against our outcomes is looking very strong, despite the many challenges thrown our way. I wanted to again thank those who participated and provided feedback through this process. Our consultant will be giving a presentation on initial results and workshopping this more with you at the Member Forum.

I also wanted to note that AHA has continued to liaise with the Australian Government on the proposed Biosecurity Protection Levy and its rollout. We met with members of the department in late August; they told us that while the Commonwealth is committed to the implementation of this levy, they listened to our candid feedback and concerns, which came from many of you.  To have a further say, consultation is currently open, and we will have a representative from the department at the Member Forum to provide an update and answer your questions.

Finally, in the way of stakeholder engagement, I was recently invited to speak at the APVMA Stakeholder Connections series, which was a great opportunity to provide APVMA staff with an understanding of the important work that we do and how it connects with their work.

As part of my presentation, I spoke about how:  we directly liaise with APVMA to ensure access to emergency use permits should they be needed for disease outbreaks. We currently manage two vaccine banks – one for FMD and one for Anthrax. For the FMD Vaccine Bank, to ensure that activation of the bank goes smoothly, we have in place two things:

1. APVMA Permit to allow emergency use supply for an unregistered agricultural or veterinary chemical product or unapproved active constituent; and
2. APVMA Consent to Import an unregistered agricultural or veterinary chemical product or unapproved active constituent.

I also spoke to our involvement in the AgVet Chem grants program that DAFF lead. Another example of how we engage with APVMA is when we support our smaller industry members such as the Goat Industry Council of Australia to seek a variation to an existing product (in this case for pain relief). In this specific instance, AHA initially funded a scoping piece of work, which has now progressed to a project co-funded with MLA to further progress the application.

It is always a pleasure to be invited to speak with and engage with members and stakeholders and I thank APVMA for this opportunity.

Thanks,

Kathleen