23 July 2008
Australian Animal Health Laboratory
Geelong, Victoria
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Exotic animal diseases are the greatest threat to Australia’s livestock industries.
It’s the Australian Animal Health Laboratory’s (AAHL) job to stop them.
Equine influenza
That’s what it did last year when we were hit by equine influenza.
AAHL was instrumental in helping to eradicate the disease.
Australia was declared provisionally free of equine influenza (EI) in March this year – just seven months after the first cases were detected.
This is a fantastic result given that we were dealing with the biggest exotic animal disease event in Australian history.
If EI ever became established in Australia it would devastate the country’s multi-billion dollar horse-racing, equestrian and recreational riding industries.
CSIRO scientists at AAHL quickly identified the first Australian case of EI using serology and tests originally developed to detect avian influenza.
These tests were subsequently used by state and territory veterinary laboratories, with AAHL providing quality assurance.
Meanwhile, AAHL confirmed its diagnosis by isolating the virus and sequencing part of its genome.
This genetic information helped to establish the probable source of the virus and the best vaccine to fight it with.
Australian Animal Health Laboratory
The successful eradication of equine influenza is a testament to our animal health capabilities – and nowhere are those capabilities more in evidence than here at AAHL.
This is a national research facility very effectively managed on behalf of the Commonwealth by CSIRO.
This is a national centre of excellence. The research, diagnostic services and policy advice that come out of AAHL all contribute to making us more internationally competitive, increasing our well-being, and protecting our environment.
It is also home to a modern animal facility that can house beasts under PC4 quarantine containment conditions – the most stringent available anywhere in the world.
Diagnostic Emergency Response Laboratory
The latest addition to the AAHL’s armoury is this new Diagnostic Emergency Response Laboratory (DERL).
DERL is a state-of-the-art, high-throughput testing laboratory, which will make it possible to process more samples at a faster rate in the event of an emergency – I’m told this is called a diagnostic surge.
Recent outbreaks of foot-and-mouth and other diseases in Europe and Asia have reminded us how quickly these events can escalate.
It is essential that we have the capacity to detect incursions quickly and respond to them effectively. This new facility provides that capacity.
Protecting Australia from foot-and-mouth disease is a high priority for both government and the livestock industry.
The Productivity Commission estimates that even an isolated outbreak of foot-and-mouth that was rapidly brought under control would slash $2 to $3 billion off our gross domestic product.
In an emergency like that, DERL would become an extremely efficient and bio-secure assembly line for processing up to 10,000 samples a day.
As well as providing the initial diagnosis, it would continue testing throughout the outbreak to ensure authorities were delivering the right response.
During peacetime, when there is no emergency animal disease outbreak, the laboratory will be used for:
• general diagnostic work
• test development and validation
• exotic disease exclusion work
• and predictive bio-modelling.
We also hope it will be used to train and further the research of Australian and overseas scientists.
The money to establish the Diagnostic Emergency Response Laboratory was provided by the Australian Government – with $5 million for construction coming through CSIRO, and half a million for specialist equipment coming through the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry.
To tell us more about this very important and very impressive facility, AAHL has prepared a short video, which I now invite you to join me in watching.