Could Australia avoid egg shortages with better biosecurity?

If you like eggs for breakfast, you might be wondering why they have become so much harder to find and why you’re paying more for them.

A wave of bird flu in Victoria has caused ongoing egg shortages across Australia with some families buying their own backyard chooks to secure their own supply.

Now, an even more contagious strain is spreading around the world, and experts are concerned about what might happen if it arrives in Australia.

But it’s not just the egg industry scrambling to keep up with disease – brace yourself for more breakfast disruption – tomatoes and honey could be next.

A growing list of incursions

Tomato producers are facing the devastating impacts of Tomato Brown Rugose Fruit Virus. While the virus itself doesn’t pose food safety risk, it can reduce the productivity of tomato, capsicum and chilli crops by up to 70 per cent.

After an initial eradication attempt, biosecurity authorities have decided that eradicating the virus from Australia is no longer possible.

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Meanwhile, honey production and prices will be affected by the spread of varroa – a parasitic mite that feeds on the brood and adults of European honeybees.

An attempt at eradication has recently ceased, and honey producers and pollination-reliant industries must now spend extra time and money dealing with this pest.

And beyond breakfast, even the iconic ‘shrimp on the barbie’ might be under threat as authorities and prawn producers battle a nasty disease in crustaceans.

At least we can still enjoy our outdoor spaces, right?  Well, sort of.

While Victorians may be used to pesky and painful European wasps sharing picnics, there could be worse to come in the form of a tiny but extremely damaging ant – the Red Imported Fire Ant.

These ants could cause damages of $AU40 billion to $AU60 billion over the next 30 years if they are allowed to establish and spread across Australia.

And hopefully picnics under beautiful shade trees won’t be affected by the Polyphagous Shot Hole Borer – an exotic pest of native and exotic trees alike – which authorities in Western Australia have declared is no longer possible to eradicate.

The reality is that Australia is constantly under threat from hundreds of invasives – pests, diseases and weeds.

So, what’s going on and how can we hope to manage all these threats all at once? Most importantly, could we do better?

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An ounce of biosecurity prevention is worth two pounds of cure

Biosecurity needs to work smarter

Recently, with our colleagues, we compiled a book, Biosecurity: A Systems Perspective, which focuses on getting biosecurity decisions right by understanding all of the elements of biosecurity and how they relate to one another.

This is best done through multi-disciplinary teams – including experts from natural  sciences, statistics, mathematical modelling, human behaviour and economics.

While this might sound obvious, many biosecurity specialists are often drawn only from natural scientific areas, because understanding the biology of a threat is essential to developing an appropriate management strategy.

As a result, many of the tools and methodologies available in professions that biosecurity agencies don’t traditionally consult with could be adopted by the sector. 

In other words, we’ve got a bit of catching up to do and biosecurity agencies need to work smarter. 

From actuarial science to organisational theory

Australia, and biosecurity agencies globally, need a fundamental change guided by the principle that tax-payer funds should be spent efficiently.

Economics can play an important role in this and is a key discipline with significant potential to add value to existing scientific knowledge and contemporary risk analysis within biosecurity.

Perhaps the most obvious use of economics is guiding the prioritisation and allocation of funds aimed at reducing biosecurity threats.

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But we can also apply economics to the design of policies to ensure that farmers, importers and other stakeholders are incentivised to do the right thing. 

Surprisingly, the role of incentives in biosecurity policy design has only recently begun to receive serious attention.  

We believe expertise in wide-ranging fields from actuarial science to organisational theory, in collaboration with traditional scientific disciplines, can all play a role in developing future-ready and adaptive biosecurity systems.

The truth is in our increasingly globalised world it’s impossible to keep all biosecurity threats out of Australia. 

The trade-off for importing goods and having the freedom to travel is that threats will occasionally make their way to our shores.

We need to make sure we are as prepared as possible to deal with them.

By improving our approach there is hope we can help better protect the Australian environment, economy, community and lifestyle.

And, yes, it can help prevent those egg shortages.

Biosecurity: A Systems Perspective is published by Routledge and available to buy online. The book is compiled by Associate Professor Susan Hester, Dr Lucie Bland, Dr Edith Arndt, Sana Bau, James S Camac, Evelyn Mannix, Dr Raphael Trouve and Professor Andrew Robinson.