According to Minister of Australian Fisheries, Mr. Eric Aborts, Biosecurity Australia (BA) has announced that they would strengthen quarantine measures on shrimp imports so as to protect its domestic shrimp farming industry and marine environment from threat of epidemics.

The shrimp diseases endanger not only the public health but also Australian exploitation and cultivation of aqua products. Shrimp imports, thus, need to be supplied from the sources that are recognized non- disease or undergo testing of a range of diseases. However, shrimp imports will still be allowed if they are high-grade processed products, such as shrimp in batter, salted shrimp or sulfurized shrimp.

Australia now imports shrimp on the quarantine regime applied since 2000 and tightened in 2001.

Australia applied tougher quarantine measures after BA had announced Import Risk Analysis (IRA) draft last year and received more than 50 feedbacks. These new measures are expected to be applied from September, along with completion of IRA. Australia Quarantine and Inspection Service (AQIS) will inform import license-holders of new quarantine requirements. Shrimp hatchers and exploiters strongly supported these measures with the expectation that they could protect the 600 million- AUD-worth Australian shrimp industry (about 530,8 million USD).

Last year, Australian government raised a random investigation into shrimp imports in supermarkets and found that 100% of them had exotic diseases. In addition, more and more fishermen have used food-shrimp as baits, which made them substances passing diseases from imported shrimps to Australian fed shrimps and natural shrimps.

Typically, the incident in Darwin in 2000, in which unprocessed shrimp imports used as food for shrimp and crab resulted in White Spot Syndrome Virus (WSSV) epidemic forced BA to carry out IRA on shrimp and shrimp imports.

However, the message of banning raw shrimp imports from not-free-from disease shrimp –sourced countries which has been sent to aqua product importers met objections. Australian shrimp hatchers were satisfied but the shrimp importers felt angry. Some suppliers are considering filing this case to WTO.

BA said, the tougher quarantine measures were to prevent different epidemics from spreading through Australian aqua products cultivation and exploitation establishments. This, however, led to a complete ban on raw shrimp imports because there are no suppliers providing shrimp imports that are recognized to be free from diseases. As a result, the shrimp prices could sharply increase.

According to Mr. George Kailis, Vice President of Australian Seafood Importers Association (ASIS), this Australian government’s decision has not been supported, especially in Asia, the main Australian source of raw shrimp. He also said several countries intend to bring legal proceedings against Australia to WTO because they assumed that the Australian restriction aimed at protectionism. The shrimp suppliers also will require Australian government to clarify the reason for its decision.

If this restriction is applied, it would be the consumers who incur most losses because the quarantine charges would be incorporated into the shrimp prices.