RISK.....NO ONE WANTS TO TAKE

Under the guidelines of my AQIS licence i am trained to follow every procedure to the T.
But there is also the ASEL- which is the Australian Standards of Exporting livestock, and the Importing Country's Importing conditions.
It is not me, nor my government or an airline that decides what i can do or not.
It is the Importing country's dicision, what tests, and precautions are to be met. It is up to AQIS to make sure these conditions are met.
The same in the third country, in this case, NZ, are the regulatory body to make sure the EU conditions are met.
For any condition, especially travel conditions, through disease zones throughout the world, no matter what country we are talking about, there is certain conditions the importing country will accept.
These are stated on their Importing conditions, and then the Importing country has to accept these as well.
These cannot be changed at a moments notice, and negotiation is by government to Government.
Conditions take a long time to be changed in the EU, as each country has to vote on any changes to the conditions, i am told there are 28 different countries that have to vote, and many different languages, which everythig has to be translated to each language.
This is not taken lightly by any government, and sometimes negotiations can take months and years.
The Europeans can see how important these importing conditions are, We are very lucky in NZ and in Australia to date, and i touch wood when i say this, is that we have not been affected by any major disease situation.
Although Australia did get late 2007 and the beginning 2008, cases of horse Influenza, which we were free of, and had never had it.
Through extremely tough measures within 6 months this was wiped out of Australia, but it bought the horse racing industry to it's knees and if not picked up straight away, and the tough measures not taken by our government, it would be a different story now, and not a good one.
so Biosecurity os so so important for all of us to understand.
Please read Pt 3 my next blog