Steve Howard
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Joined: 14 Feb 2007
Posts: 4583
Location: Sunny South
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 Posted: Sat Jan 26, 2008 9:55 pm Post subject: NEWSFLASH |
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The purpose of yesterdays meeting was two fold.
Ruth Lockwood posted this on another forum folks.
The first half of the day, was a meeting of the Committee for Aquaculture Health to discuss the changes in the up coming Aquatic Animal Health Directive that the Uk must implement by August this year.
The New Directive is an incredible document that has combined many years of input from stakeholders, including ECHO/SAA and will pave the way for fishery management standards and competency to increase over the coming decade.
Some of the key features of the directive are:
Official authorisation of suppliers/dealers of aquatic animals
Potential for authorisation to be removed for non-compliance (effectively, by default, creating the "wonder" list of suppiers ECHO members have always cried out for)
Registration of a responsible person for all stocked fisheries.
The facility for Member states to self-declare disease freedom from zones or compartments.
The afternoon session at Defra was for the KHV steering committee, again which ECHO has been at the forefront of since it's conception, and our purpose was to determine the disease status of KHV in the UK to write in a control policy for August.
This sounds a lot easier than it is!!!!!!!!!
The basic point yesterday came down to whether Defra considered KHV economically or practically controllable in its present distribution.
Based on early indications from an ECHO backed 6 month project, suggestions are that KHV may not be as widespread as we had feared and has indeed been agreed controllable. That was some good news, although it must be stressed that the final report is not due until March.
For any import controls, a category of health status must be decided upon before April, and similar to the successful SVC model, the group has urged Defra to submit to the commission a programme of disease free compartments alongside a control and eradication view on designated zones.
Further details of this structure will follow in the next few weeks as ECHO draws up a draft for Defra to support.
Under this regime, it will not be possible to import carp that are from a KHV positive source, (the exporting authority would have to provide a negative result)for use in recreational wild fisheries and the permission of vaccinated stocks will also be refused on this basis. Very few (infact maybe only 2) farms in Thrid countries outside the EU can comply with this, and mainland Europe imports have already ceased under SVC controls. Effectively, legal imports are becoming history at last.
I would like to underline very strongly, that although the directive is indeed a legislative step forward, one of the biggest threats of KHV will always be from the ornamental trade. This we can not alter (far to legal and boring to explain why here) although man we did try!! The risk from hobbyistts discarding their unwanted pets, or unscrupulous fishery owners attempting to captilise on a loophole will remain, but in the case of the latter, the new Directive as a whole holds some very interesting obligations now for fishery owners that may make them think twice about bio security, that's for sure!!
So, to sum up, from this August, ECHO has effectively achieved a block on all legal introductions of deadly viruses..........not bad for a bunch of carp anglers.
And just because you all need to know.........for the last 12 months, I could not have attended any of the Defra meetings (of which there were loads) leading up to this one, potentially meaning that 3 years of lobbying would have been lost-thankfully ECHO has been represented by a full time professional Mike Heylin. Mike's time and effort and expenses (whilst he would and has for many years gladly given for nothing) was financed by trade donations to Fish Welfare Fund. Without his continuity and the bizarre ability to read, understand and respond to 96 page goverenment documents every week, be active in every stakeholder meeting relating to angling or fisheries and have a very keen understand of the political boxes to tick to obtain results, I would not be writing of this success today.
Many thanks to all those who supported us in this stance, in particular Martin Salter MP, clearly demonstrating once again that in Unity Lies Strength
www.echocarp.co.uk
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