A joint Plant Industries Biosecurity Committee and Plant Health Committee (PHC) workshop held in February was attended by state and commonwealth government and PIBC Members, including Plant Health Australia (PHA), Greenlife Industry Australia (GIA), Australian Grape and Wine Inc, AUSVEG, Apple and Pears Australia and Citrus Australia.

With a theme “Approaches to incentivise, value, recognise, grower adoption of high health practices” the workshop aimed to drive further collaboration between PHC and PIBC to help advance shared priorities over the coming year.

This year’s meeting builds on the success of the 2022 PIBC workshop, where one major outcome was the formation of the Pest Risk Analysis Working Group, mapping the existing Rapid Pest Risk Analysis Template against the International Plant Protection Convention Standards (IPSM 2 and IPSM 11) and Tasmania’s Import Risk Analysis template.

This year’s topic aligned with one of PIBC’s priority areas that aims to explore ways in which industry and government can work together to formally recognise industry-based high health practices. This priority area has two elements:

• support and incentivise (regulatory and market) drivers to encourage growers to implement and adopt plant protection and biosecurity initiatives and programs including recognition of outputs e.g., pest monitoring, proof of freedom, in the existing system and under a response.
• recognition by governments of industry based on-farm certification programs (third party programs) as a mechanism to reduce costs, improve business flexibility and improve on-farm production systems and national plant biosecurity.

The Plant Industry Forum, a PHA plant industry member group, agreed to form the PIBC in November 2020, to build the collective representative capacity of plant industries in a formal structure from which to engage within Australia’s plant biosecurity system.

The PIBC is a skills-based committee consisting of a minimum five and maximum eight plant industry representatives, plus a PHA staff member (ex officio), tasked with identifying and prioritising plant biosecurity capacity and capability issues along the Australian biosecurity continuum with an emphasis on the domestic plant biosecurity system.

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