Prawns carrying white spot virus discovered in Queensland...

Prawns carrying white spot virus discovered in Queensland supermarkets

Four Corners
By Linton Besser, Peter Cronau and Richard Baines
Updated about an hour agoMon 2 Jul 2018, 6:23am
Photo: Professor Wayne Knibb, from the University of the Sunshine Coast, has been testing green prawns for white spot. (ABC News: Megan Kinninment)
A highly destructive virus has again been detected in supermarket prawns despite tightened import restrictions introduced after a disease outbreak decimated south-east Queensland's prawn farming industry.
The shock results come as a Four Corners investigation reveals how some ruthless seafood importers have been deliberately evading Australia's biosecurity defences in a hunt for profit, exploiting a quarantine regime identified as "remarkably naive" in a top-level inquiry.
The virus threatening life on the water


Serena Zipf and her family had to watch helplessly as biosecurity officials pumped chlorine into their prawn farm when it was struck by an outbreak of white spot.

The revelations raise troubling questions about the nature of Australia's preparedness to combat a slew of exotic diseases and pests that have the potential to wreak carnage on the economy.
Brian Jones, former adviser to the Inspector-General of Biosecurity, said the incursion of white spot disease in 2016 "won't be the last".
"The Government is not fulfilling its duty to protect the border," he said.
In the face of soaring international trade, scientists, industry executives and former government officials have told Four Corners that Australia's biosecurity defences have been simply inadequate.
'Major failure of Australia's biosecurity'

In a scathing review Mr Jones co-authored, the Inspector-General found the devastating outbreak of white spot was "a major failure of Australia's biosecurity system".
Critical to this failure was a policy decision that allowed seafood importers to unpack shipping containers into cold stores unsupervised by any government officials.
The policy afforded rogue players days and sometimes weeks to disguise dodgy consignments from inspectors, including by substituting diseased prawns for clean ones.
Is it safe to eat prawns with white spot?


White spot is deadly to prawns and some other crustaceans and Four Corners' own testing has found the virus in our supermarkets. So is there any threat to human health?

The Inspector-General found the department had placed "too much trust in importers to do the right thing".
"The department demonstrated a remarkable level of naivety about the potential for importers to wilfully circumvent import conditions for any class of prawns that required viral testing."
The department conceded to Four Corners there were "significant shortcomings in its handling of this issue", and insisted it had "taken substantial action to address them".
Import conditions were tightened midway through last year after a six-month trade suspension was lifted.
As of July 2017, no containers could be opened except by biosecurity officers.
Yet the virus — which poses no harm to humans — has reared its head again.
In April, Queensland officials identified the virus in the wild, at locations in the northern reaches of Moreton Bay.
Then, in late May, the Department of Agriculture quietly released a note that said 12 consignments of prawns — stopped at the wharves under the new "enhanced" regime — had tested positive for the disease.
Fresh testing reveals white spot

Now, Four Corners can reveal the virus is still getting past the department's frontline.
Testing conducted for the program found traces of the virus present in 30 per cent of prawn samples purchased from a range of supermarket outlets in the south-east Queensland area.
The samples were examined by University of the Sunshine Coast professor Wayne Knibb, an expert in the genetics of marine animals. He tested green prawns from 10 major retail outlets.
"We found about a third of the material that we looked had evidence of white spot DNA in it," he said.
Professor Knibb's testing has been independently verified by a separate laboratory.
"Clearly, if we can find in a very limited sample 30 per cent of samples that were in the history connected or in contact with the virus, then clearly we're playing with fire here," he said.
"We have a route of a virus that is a particularly dangerous virus and shown worldwide just how destructive it can be. It's damaged whole national economies, and it's cost billions of dollars."
Photo: A prawn infected with white spot disease. (Supplied: DIGFISH)

Agriculture Minister David Littleproud and Daryl Quinlivan, the secretary of the Department of Agriculture, both declined to be interviewed by Four Corners.
In a statement, a spokesman said the department "has been very clear that its enhanced import conditions do not guarantee that prawns with WSSV [white spot virus] will never be imported into Australia".
"The conditions are designed to reduce the biosecurity risk to a level that is very low, but not zero," the statement read.
The department said that in the wake of the disaster it established "new processes" which ensured "all arrangements meet appropriate standards of governance, risk management and assurance".
The prawn farming industry has been bitterly disappointed by the Federal Government's failure to heed its warnings that white spot was highly likely to be entering Australia in imported prawns.
In fact, the Government had also been warned for years by importers themselves who had been ruthlessly undercut on price.
Investigators at the department were tipped off about smuggling operations as far back as 2012, prompting two secret operations targeting seafood importers.
By midway through 2016, their inquiries were turning up alarming evidence of the deliberate circumvention of Australia's biosecurity defences. Viral tests commissioned by investigators found more than 85 per cent of their retail samples were positive for the disease.
By the end of last year, the department was taking action against the nine seafood companies responsible for 70 percent of all raw prawns imported into Australia in 2016.
Only one has so far been charged. EB Ocean, a seafood importer based in Melbourne, faces three charges to be heard in 2019. Two of its employees have been charged with hindering the Government's investigation. All have pleaded not guilty.
Watch Linton Besser's investigation, Outbreak, on Four Corners at 8.30pm on ABC TV or on ABC iview.