ACT Division President's Report - February

Happy New Year to all veterinarians, their families and colleagues. I hope your Holiday season was just that – for those who worked through, I hope your holidays are coming soon😊.

I’m sorry there is not much to report at this stage. Your committee was unable to meet earlier in February, but have a meeting planned for Tuesday 29. A principal reason for this meeting is to determine our activities for the year. Our activities are controlled by National office, which for budgetary reasons is allowing each Division, Branch and SIG just two activities in this calendar year. We have to prune our wish list to try to provide relevant and attractive activities for all members – more news soon 😊.

In the background, committee members are active on the AVA’s Advocacy advisory committee, the newly reformed microchip committee and advocated for a local veterinarian to receive an AVA award this year. We are still awaiting an opinion from the Veterinary Practitioner’s Board about requirements to allow supply of restricted mediations (mainly analgesics) to livestock producers.

We have hosted two meetings for local equine practitioners, one of which was attended by Equine Veterinarian’s Australia (EVA) President Hadley Willsallen, EVA EO Jeffrey Wilkinson, Dr Kristen Steele, Senior Advocacy Officer who is leading the AVA workforce sustainability project and advocacy, and our Senior Advocacy Officer Liz Gemes.

DAFF recently reviewed the risk of rabies in imported dogs, cats and semen (Rabies review – draft report on Have Your Say) - their proposals included extending the Post Export Quarantine (PEQ) period for dog’s entering Australia from groups 3 approved countries (countries where rabies is endemic or high risk) from 10 to 30 days., amongst other changes. ACT Division suggested and contributed to an AVA response, written by Dr Melanie Latter.

The DAFF review identified the dramatic increase in criminal involvement in the sale and shipment of companion animals in the last decade, and

Based on the experience in other countries, most cases associated with fraudulent documentation or illegal importation showed clinical signs of rabies within 30 days of entry. Smith et al. (2021) suggested a 30-day waiting period would have reduced the likelihood of entry of rabid animals into the European Union and the United States in most recent cases associated with fraudulent certification. In experimental RABV infection studies, dogs displayed clinical signs and/or died from 11 to 28 days post infection (44-45)”

This led to their proposal to increase the PEQ from 10 to 30 days. The AVA agrees with this proposal clinically but advocated that animals which had originated in Australia, and had a clear record of veterinary care including vaccinations at appropriate intervals and negative serological tests, should be able to re-enter Australia using the shorter PEQ. This particularly applies to the family pets of DFAT employees – our Embassy and High Commission staff on foreign postings. DAFF have modified their new policies incorporating at least some of our suggestions.

An important component of animal importation is that they be permanently identified in a manner easily readable in Australia. Our response included strengthening the provisions around microchipping of (companion) animals such that they must be identified by a microchip meeting the relevant Australian Standards, and that they should be registered on an Australian microchip database before leaving quarantine. Although DAFF has strengthened their requirements around microchipping, they have still not adopted the, to us, obvious requirement of registration on an Australian microchip database. Historically, the owners of animals leaving quarantine have failed to register their pet with any microchip database or other authority, or have been unable to register their pet because the type of microchip was encrypted and unable to be read by the Australian microchip reader network. Not only does this make these animals potentially unidentifiable should they be lost, but makes animal control operations such as dangerous dogs investigations much more difficult ,and could make tracing of these animals impossible in the face of a relevant exotic or other emergency disease outbreak.

The AVA ACT Division annual meeting will be held on Wednesday 10th May at 7.30pm via zoom. Details for the meeting and calling for committee nominations will be circulated in coming weeks.

Michael Hayward BVSc FAVA
AVA ACT Division President 2021, 2022
Michael.Hayward@gungahlinvet.com.au | 0418 625 321