Farm Biosecurity Practices and the Management of Emergency Animal Disease

The aim of this project was to provide a comparative understanding of how beef producers in Australia’s Northern and Southern beef zones recognise and manage emergency animal disease (EAD). In addressing this aim, the project also sought to explore the most efficient and effective strategies for communicating information about on-farm biosecurity and EAD prevention practices to producers. Data were collected and analysed in three specific phases. The first phase involved are view of policies, perspectives and literature aimed at informing beef producers of EAD and biosecurity. The findings from this information were then triangulated by conducting semistructured interviews with government and industry stakeholders with the aim of developing furtherunderstanding of how EAD and biosecurity information is communicated to producers. A third phase of data collection was subsequently conducted with beef producers from the Riverina-Murray region of New South Wales (NSW) and the Burdekin region in North East Queensland (NE QLD). Producers were initially sent a questionnaire, which was used to collect general information about biosecurity practices and understanding, as well as demographics and characteristics of herd sizes and farms.The questionnaire was also used as a scoping document to identify potential participants for the interviews. Twenty participants from NSW and 14 from NE QLD were involved in semi-structured interviews, which sought to specifically explore biosecurity and EAD understanding, practices,concerns and how information and knowledge was obtained. The interviews also engaged participants in discussion about preferences for information and communication.