Industry welcomes tighter poultry import regulations

National

The PNG Poultry Industry Association (PIA) has welcomed the Minister for Agriculture and Livestock Benny Allen’s decision to implement tighter biosecurity on poultry import.
Allan signed a Gazettal notice last month to revoke an earlier notice G459 of June 2017.
PIA secretary Dr Keith Galgal said the earlier  notice had compromised the disease-free status of PNG’s avian population (including village chicken and commercial poultry), and had also set a bad precedence to open PNG’s biosecurity borders to exotic pests and diseases that could be detrimental to both subsistence and commercial agriculture, wildlife and consumers’ health and wellbeing.
Galgal said PIA acknowledged Allan and his vice-minister Henry Ame for coming out to consult with poultry industry players.
Galgal said applying New Zealand’s world-best practice biosecurity standards would strengthen National Agriculture Quarantine and Inspection Authority’s stringent bio-security standards that had secured PNG’s freedom from  world’s worst avian diseases.