Qld: Stink over raw prawn imports

AAP General News (Australia)
04-24-2001
Qld: Stink over raw prawn imports

By Rosemary Desmond

BRISBANE, April 24 AAP - Two overseas shipments of raw prawns have been seized in Brisbane
and Cairns after the potentially devastating white spot virus was detected.

A spokesman for Queensland Primary Industries Minister Henry Palaszczuk said today
more than seven tonnes of Indonesian green prawns were seized on April 10 after routine
inspections by Queensland Boating and Fisheries patrol officers.

They imposed an emergency quarantine declaration on the two shipments, which are likely
to be sent back to Indonesia.

The spokesman said there was no threat to humans from the virus but authorities were
concerned that Queensland's multi-million dollar prawn, crab and lobster industry could
be devastated if the prawns shipments were sold as bait.

"We've detected the virus in these two shipments," the spokesman said.

"Any risk is too much risk.

"But to date, wild and farmed prawn stocks are white spot virus-free."

One Nation Party Senator Len Harris today called on the Liberal, National and Labor
parties to halt what he termed the "so-called free trade nonsense" that allowed such tainted
overseas products to enter the country.

Australian Prawn Farmers' Association president Col Price also called for a ban on
green prawn imports from affected overseas countries.

Mr Price said in a statement the virus represented a major risk to Australia's disease-free
status and might infect wild stocks.

"It is now literally on the doorstep of the Great Barrier Reef and Moreton Bay," he said.

"The virus must not be allowed to cause devastation to our industry and our marine environment."

Speaking from Canberra, Australian Quarantine Inspection Service (AQIS) spokesman Carson
Creagh said the virus had been discovered in Darwin last year after frozen, uncooked imported
prawns had been fed to live prawns at two aquaculture facilities.

"The virus can cause disease but we have never had the disease in Australia," he said.

"If wild stocks have been exposed to the virus, they haven't contracted the disease."

He described the risk of the transmission of the virus from frozen, imported prawns
to live fisheries as "theoretical".

Mr Creagh said the federal government had no power under the Australian Constitution
to direct state governments to ban the sale of imported frozen prawns as bait.

Meanwhile, Dr Ian Anderson, senior fisheries pathologist at the Department of Primary
Industries in Townsville, described Senator Harris's comments about white spot outbreaks
in Queensland as "politically motivated".

He said there had been no outbreaks of the disease in farmed or wild prawns.

AAP rad/jhm/las/sb

KEYWORD: PRAWNS

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