The Australian Veterinary Emergency Plan otherwise known as AUSVETPLAN contains the nationally-agreed approach for the response to emergency animal disease (EAD) incidents in Australia. Animal Health Australia has been managing the development and review of the manuals listed under the AUSVETPLAN to ensure the documents not only look great but provide up-to-date and relevant information.
Check out our progress in the update below!
Project update
The 2021 calendar year has been big for AUSVETPLAN. We now have 39 of our AUSVETPLAN documents updated into the Edition 5 format, with the others under active review. This is a great achievement and a testament to the program management process we have put in place – thanks especially to the efforts of Stephanie Eastman who was seconded to us from the Department of Agriculture, Water and Resources for twelve months. We thank the department for allowing Stephanie the opportunity to work at AHA for this time, and we are very grateful to Stephanie for all her excellent work.
Over the last couple of months, we have published the new response strategy for porcine epidemic diarrhoea and the revised (major review) version of the pork industry enterprise manual.
In addition, the writing groups for the foot-and-mouth disease, lumpy skin disease and wild animal response strategies, the wool and dairy enterprise manuals, and the declared areas and decontamination manuals have been very active, and we look forward to completing these reviews in 2022.
Looking ahead
The reviews of enterprise manuals for the artificial breeding centres, meat processing and dairy industries are nearing completion and are expected to be published in early 2022.
The AUSVETPLAN project is currently recruiting for a new manager to drive the strategic review work, and hopefully we’ll have someone on board soon. In the meantime, some work has been deprioritised until the new manager starts. For example, the valuation and compensation work that we anticipated starting by now will not begin until early 2022, and some of the reviews are on hold until then too.
Thank you
Thank you to all those who have participated in the AUSVETPLAN writing groups and provided comments on the manuals as they go through the approvals process. Your contributions are greatly appreciated, and we are grateful for all the time you dedicate to AUSVETPLAN.
We are looking towards another productive year in 2022, and we are very much looking forward to working with all our members and stakeholders to achieve big things again!
– Peter Dagg, Head of Program AUSVETPLAN.