Editorial - Global and local angles for Biosecurity Summit

Murray Sherwin

This magazine goes to print in the week of the fourth Biosecurity Summit, which will discuss the theme of "Thinking Globally - Acting Locally". It is appropriate to reflect on how the biosecurity system needs to respond to pressures of the future, including taking responsibility for our own biosecurity risks. But it is also heartening to see the substantial progress we have made in the years since the Biosecurity Strategy was launched in August 2003. To those attending the summit, I look forward to meeting you and discussing our achievements to date and the challenges we face.

The last ten years have seen some dramatic changes within New Zealand, and indeed throughout the world. One of these is the ease of travel and trade. The number of people flying into New Zealand in the last financial year was almost double that of ten years ago. The numbers of used vehicles and sea containers being imported have more than doubled.

At the same time, there is increasing domestic pressure to keep out pests and diseases that could potentially impact on our economy or standard of living. Primary products brought in $30 billion between June 2005 and June 2006 - a significant portion of our economy. New Zealand depends more on its primary production than every other OECD nation, and pests can seriously affect the volume and quality of our products.

Visitors to New Zealand are becoming more aware of our biosecurity risks and how seriously we take them. In 2001, when the $200 instant fine for undeclared risk goods was first implemented, we issued 9,406 notices. Fast forward to 2005, when only 8,676 were given out, even though the number of people crossing the border had increased by more than a million. I am pleased that people are getting the message, but we can't afford to be complacent and we need to keep reminding people of their obligations. One of our challenges is to ensure that our compliance activities are targeting the right groups and behaviours.

The biosecurity system protects our standard of living in its broadest sense - it safeguards the economic, environmental, social and cultural values of New Zealanders. This was one of the main themes from the Biosecurity Strategy and I am delighted with the way that MAF has embraced this broader mandate.

But there is still a long way to go to achieve the Biosecurity Strategy's vision for New Zealand of having a high-performing, integrated biosecurity system in 2010, and it is becoming clear that we can't keep running the biosecurity system the way we have been.

Unlike other problems, increasing the amount of money spent on biosecurity will not make the issue go away. As economies develop, international travel becomes easier and more frequent, and the consumption of foreign produce increases, the pressure on our biosecurity system will grow. At the moment, we are running just to keep up and this is not sustainable. We have to adapt and find smarter ways of working.

We will need better analysis and profiling of risk areas so we can target the biggest risks, but that also means saying "no" at times when the risks are low. We successfully keep out the worst pests, but as a trading nation we can't close the borders and are actively negotiating new trade agreements. We respond to many incursions each year and have a better track record of eradicating pests than any other country, but we still don't always know where these pests are coming from and we need to become more preventative. The majority of our communications efforts are reactive and attached to incursion responses, rather than proactively getting our message out before we have to deal with pests.

One of the main ways we can work smarter is by cooperating with other government agencies, industries, international trade partners and regional councils. Individuals and non-governmental organisations play a vital role in keeping New Zealand safe and free of pests and you can expect to see a consistent theme emerging about the importance of people understanding and managing their own biosecurity risks. This is the essence of the summit theme "Thinking Globally - Acting Locally".

Murray Sherwin

Director-General, MAF

Back to Biosecurity Magazine - Issue 71

Page last updated: 30 April 2008