When compared to other primary products such as wheat, sheep, safflower etc, yabbies are an extremely safe product to grow as they do not require any chemical inputs and other inputs in addition are minimal. The feeding of yabbies is usually with lupins because they are high protein readily obtainable easy to throw or spread and because lupins are the safest of all grains. No insect pests attack lupins in storage so no chemicals are needed as evidenced by National Residue Surveys.
Microbiological Risks
Microbiological food safety issues are addressed by cooking yabbies for 5 minutes after water comes to boil - a time temperature combination recognised world wide by food safety regulators as an effective thermal process that renders food microbiologically safe the majority of food borne pathogens. Other food / pathogen combinations that may survive such a bactericidal step are not associated with yabbies and therefore pose little or no risk.
Gill Washing
Gill washing assists in lowering potential pathogen contamination will not eliminate it on a live yabby and therefore has little to do with food safety, but more so a lot to do with the health and durability of the animal while alive. Most growers pull in their pots from the bank and in doing so disturb the sediments on the bottom .A yabby can live for many years in or out of the water as long as their gills are kept moist. When they first come out of the water they close their gills thus trapping any disturbed sediments in the gill cavity. These sediments can contain bacteria which if not flushed out can kill the animal in 3 days. Most growers overcome this by holding them for a minute or so in clean water to flush out their gills. It can also be overcome by pulling pots up from a boat thus ensuring the pots are pulled through clean water.
These issues have been looked at by Victoria Fisheries and others with no concerns.
Sheep and cattle manure are not significantly different to birds fish or other animals that live around the yabby environment and many other primary production environments for that matter. Currently all live animals stand in their own urine and faeces both in the paddocks or on transport. The FSANZ Draft Assessment does not mention any pathogens associated with faecal contamination with respect to the risk ranking of yabbies and these pathogens as with raw meat are killed by the cooking process as identified and recognized by FSANZ.
In addition seabirds defecating over an out door processing area of a boat either moored or processing fish at sea pose a food safety risk the difference there being the fish are deceased and therefore the food safety risks are significantly increased and must be controlled.
