COMMONWEALTH FAILS TO ACT ONCE AGAIN

The Commonwealth Government is seeking to draw attention away from its lax quarantine laws that allow potentially diseased prawns into Australia and which pose a continuing threat to our environment, the NSW Minister for Fisheries, Eddie Obeid said today.

Mr Obeid said the Commonwealth Government must immediately ban the importation of green prawns from countries where White Spot Syndrome Virus (WSSV) is known to exist.

"While these prawns are safe for human consumption, letting these prawns into Australia is an unacceptable risk," Mr Obeid said.

"The Commonwealth's actions on this issue should be condemned. After years of ignoring NSW's calls for a ban, the Commonwealth only recently attempted stricter controls and even this is too little and far too late."

Mr Obeid said whether this disease is present in Sydney Harbour or any Australian waters remains unclear due to conflicting test results and the NSW Government is awaiting the findings of further testing.

"The Commonwealth continues to ignore the real issue here - protecting our $400m Australian prawn industry and our pristine waters from potential disease."

"The Australian Prawn Farmers Association has described the Seafood Industry Council's claims that this matter is affecting prawn sales as 'rubbish'."

"By banning the use of green prawns from Sydney Harbour as bait on April 12, NSW took a sensible precautionary response to scientific advice provided by the Commonwealth Government (see attached)."

"This positive test was repeated by the CSIRO and repeat testing continued to show positive to this disease. As I said in my public statement on April 12, one test for Sydney Harbour has returned a positive test to this disease although this does not mean that all prawn stocks in Sydney Harbour are infected."

Since the intervention of the Federal Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry, Warren Truss, the Commonwealth Government is offering inconsistent advice about the reliability of tests for this disease.

The NSW Government has always acted on the advice of our NSW Fisheries scientists who were relying on information provided to them by the Commonwealth Government and Australia's pre-eminent scientific organisation - the CSIRO.

Contact:
Port Stephens Fisheries Centre
02 4982 1232

NSW Fisheries memo
From Dr Steve Kennelly, Chief Scientist
To Director of Fisheries
Date 21 May, 2001

I refer to the current scientific dispute concerning the testing for white spot syndrome virus (WSSV) in prawn samples taken from Sydney Harbour.

There appears to be a contradiction in the advice we have received from the Animal BioSecurity Division of the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries & Forestry Australia (AFFA) and more recent correspondence from the CSIRO Livestock Industries Australia Animal Health Laboratory (CSIRO).

Advice received from AFFA on 10 April 2001 states that the PCR tests used by the Commonwealth for white spot syndrome virus are considered to be 100% specific for the virus. AFFA's advice confirms that this means it is not possible to get a false positive reading. This may only occur using tests that are less than 100% specific.

In scientific terms AFFA states that this 100 specificity is because primers that are used in the test are designed to amplify only sequences of the targeted pathogen (in this case, WSSV).

The contradictory advice from CSIRO in a memo dated 17 May 2001 is that such a definitive diagnosis cannot be made on a PCR result alone. That is, the CSIRO lab's position appears to be that the 100% specificity stated by AFFA is not true.

The advice given to the Minister for Fisheries that white spot disease had been found in Sydney Harbour was based on the fact that CSIRO had done repeat tests on the prawn tissue sample, and that the Commonwealth had stated that the test was 100% specific.

As you know, when the finding was announced on 12 April 2001, Mr Obeid specifically stated that a single sample had tested positive. Since then, at his direction, we have taken the position of doing an intensive survey of all prawn fisheries in the State and especially an exhaustive survey of the prawns in Port Jackson to get more PCR tests done to determine the prevalence of white spot virus.

It is unfortunate that the urgency which we adopted in our sampling program has not been matched by the Commonwealth laboratories we have sent the samples to, so that we are unable at this stage to further identify the existence of WSSV in Port Jackson or NSW. We are eagerly awaiting the results from those laboratories. I hope that when the test results are finalised, our initial concerns are not borne out.

Dr Steve Kennelly
Chief Scientist
NSW Fisheries
Cronulla Fisheries Centre