Biosecurity

Travellers up risk of dire diseases

DANIEL BATEMAN daniel.bateman@news.com.au YAK cheese, rabbit ears and zombie fungus-infested caterpillars are among more than 4200 items confiscated from travellers at Cairns International Airport last year.

Figures obtained from the Department of Agriculture and Water Resources show that meat and human therapeutics comprised the largest amount of goods (33.5 per cent) seized by biosecurity officials at the airport during 2018.

In total, there was 4211 biosecurity threats detected by local officials, an increase of 5.1 per cent from the previous year, with new international direct routes to Cairns contributing to higher number of detections.

Cairns Airport is the seventh busiest in Australia by passenger movements, with the number of passengers passing through each year set to hit six million by 2027.

The airport currently has flights direct to Singapore, Hong Kong, China, Japan, Indonesia, New Zealand and Papua New Guinea.

The department’s Ian Ladner said the local team was getting better at detecting items that posed a potential biosecurity threat.

“I’ve been with the department for 28 years and, since I started, we’ve gathered so much information and we’ve got all that information in our database,” he said. “So we’re able to do things a lot smarter.

“We’re also able to use a lot more technology, a lot more systems in place that are able to tell us who we should be intervening with.”

He said the high amount of meat people had tried to bring into Australia via Cairns last year was a concern.

“There’s a disease called African swine fever virus, which doesn’t hurt people, but it knocks around pigs,” he said. “It’s in ticks, that are thought to be a vector for (the disease).

“We definitely do not want this disease to come into Australia, because it would wipe our animals over here.”

Infringement notices issued by biosecurity officers to passengers at international airports carry a penalty of $420.

More serious offenders can face criminal prosecution.

Mr Ladner encouraged travellers unsure of what items needed to be declared at customs to declare them anyway.

“A lot of what people are bringing in is allowed to come in – they’re just not telling us they’ve got it in the first place,” he said. editorial@cairnspost.com.au facebook.com/TheCairnsPost www.cairnspost.com.au twitter.com/TheCairnsPost