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The new Standard will expand the responsibilities of government enforcement agencies at the primary production end of the seafood chain. The agencies have indicated that they are not expecting an increase in resources to address their new responsibilities and will respond to the situation by prioritising their efforts where enforcement will be most effective45.
A possible management option would differentiate between the lower risk businesses, that could be licensed but not systematically inspected, and the higher risk businesses that would be subject to rigorous enforcement46.
Enforcement agencies will be assisted by the development of a guide developed by FSANZ, to aid in the interpretation of the Standard.
Some jurisdictions are likely to be faced with a major effort in implementing the new Standard. The experience of SafeFood Production NSW, bearing in mind that it is one of the smaller seafood producing jurisdictions, is that implementation can be accomplished within existing resources, where assistance to specific sectors of industry is staged over a period of years.
The staged implementation of the regulations in NSW - focusing initially on the wild catch sector and progressing to the smoked fish and aquaculture sectors - means that SafeFood Production NSW could apply the regulations within existing resources. The cost of running the training workshops for fishers was covered by industry ($50 per fisher) together with a subsidy from the Australian Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry. Extending hygiene and safety regulations to the seafood industry in NSW did not, in practice, impose new costs on the NSW Government but will vary across States. It did incur costs on the Commonwealth government, and would result in additional costs if the program were rolled-out to other jurisdictions.
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