2007/712 Assessment of infrastructure and priority needs for the Seafood CRC technical market access support program

By Kevin Shiell

As an input to Business Plan development by the Australian Seafood CRC for the Product Quality and Integrity Research Program this project is to provide an assessment of the infrastructure and priority needs of the Seafood CRC Technical Market Access Support Program.

This project involved an examination of seafood industry technical market access and support arrangements in order to:

• Identify current infrastructure and support services relevant to the provision of technical market access support within the Australian seafood industry
• Identify and detail the infrastructure and support services relevant to the provision of technical market access support within the Australian meat, dairy, horticulture and wine industries.
• To compare and contrast the approaches adopted by these industries and to make an initial assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of these approaches.
• Detail current Australian seafood industry product integrity testing capacities and identify any capability gaps
• Identify the current technical support priorities and needs of AQIS, Biosecurity Australia, FSANZ and state food regulators
• Identify current technical market access issues and priorities of the CRC end user participants

The study involved website and document research and numerous consultations with seafood industry stakeholders, government organisations as well as with industry representatives from the horticulture, meat, wine and dairy industries.

The information gained from this examination has been used to make recommendations relevant to planning for future CRC research and development activity.