Emergency Disease Preparedness

The chicken meat industry together with a range of other livestock industries have entered into a collaborative agreement with State and Federal Governments covering the response to certain emergency animal diseases and the sharing of costs by the parties.

The documents setting out detailed strategies and management plans are called AUSVETPLANs. The AUSVETPLAN for avian influenza, Newcastle disease and Infectious Bursal Disease (caused by very virulent IBD virus or exotic antigenetic variant strains of IBD virus) are available from the Animal Health Australia site. 

Industry funding for Animal Health Australia and for industry’s share of expenditure under any disease response plan is collected through a levy on all one-day-old chicks leaving commercial hatcheries.

Outbreak Website

The Australian Government through its Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry maintains a special purpose website about emergency diseases in both animals and plants.  This website is an excellent source of information on these diseases and provides up-to-date information on any outbreak that may have occurred.  To access this website, click  here.