Gatton’s Pohlmans Nursery has embraced the heightened need for on-farm biosecurity by becoming one of the first nurseries to be certified with the new BioSecure HACCP scheme.
The certified on-farm biosecurity program for the nursery industry was launched in September as the first ever “approved” third-party biosecurity scheme under the Queensland Biosecurity Act 2014.
Developed by Nursery & Garden Industry Australia (NGIA) with funding from Hort Innovation, BioSecure HACCP enables certified production nurseries to minimise pest, disease and weed risks, while working towards a more streamlined self-certification approach to interstate trade of nursery stock.
Pohlmans production manager, Chris Johnson, said having Biosecure HACCP gives the company better control and security of the business and the industry’s future, plus allowing more flexibility to market access.
“We have had to become a lot more proactive as growers and managers rather than reactive across our whole production and risk management systems,” Mr Johnson said.
“It has been massive; we were accredited for a number of different certifications in food safety, state biosecurity and environmental industry standards but we still had several separate audits each year to maintain the level for all schemes, and had to pay major money to be inspected daily for interstate consignments.
“By this, an inspector would come in, inspect the product and even watch us spray the product before it could be dispatched; we never had too look at or be responsible for eliminating or managing the ‘possible’ pest issue.
“We wanted to get away from constant chemical spraying of our products, which were going to our customers, when our in-house crop monitoring indicated there was no issues but requirements meant we had too. It was frustrating.”
By being self-accredited in Biosecure HACCP, all the business’s certification schemes are now under one management system which allows the business to self-certify for all state and interstate consignments, meet all the required government regulations and most importantly allow Pohlmans as a horticultural skilled business to internally manage and minimise any pests, diseases and weeds that are deemed as industry and quarantine risks.
Mr Johnson said the journey to this point had been a long and tedious road at times, having been nearly six years involved in working with the industry on developing the system.
“The goal posts have moved at times with government changes et cetera but the ultimate goal was always a harmonious risk management system that worked for both industry and governments protocol, and we were determined to persevere as long as it took,” he said.
“New staff come in and learn from scratch and don’t know any different, as it is just part of our protocol now.”
Mr Johnson said plant biosecurity was the basis of the whole quality and risk management system now.
“Internally now each crop has full traceability. It is barcoded at production; all crop analysis and programs are inputted from the field via tablets and scanners and we now have full live crop history for fine tuning and referencing for the future, so we are proactive on any possible threats as much as is possible in an industry that works with perishable products,” he said.
For Pohlmans, this has reduced dump/losses by more than 1.5 per cent and reduced chemical use by more than 50pc.
