Policy paper

Aquatic animal health strategy for England: overview

Published 4 December 2015

For the first time, Defra and industry have set out their strategic aims and objectives for aquatic animal health in England. Policies and their delivery will be developed in partnership with industry and other stakeholders.

1. Introduction

The government recognises the value of the aquatic sector to the economy, society and the environment. Real benefits can be achieved by protecting and improving the health of our farmed, wild migratory and freshwater fish, and shellfish. Disease outbreaks threaten trade and profitability, the natural environment and important recreational activities such as angling. Our joint aim is to maintain England’s high aquatic animal health status by preventing the introduction and spread of aquatic animal disease, minimising the impact of endemic disease, while protecting the environment and helping ensure a sustainable aquaculture industry.

The strategy sets out some challenging aims, for government, industry and all interested stakeholders.

2. Priorities

The strategy’s priorities are:

1. Reducing the risk that disease might be introduced
2. Reducing the impact if disease is introduced
3. Providing high quality advice and guidance to industry
4. Rapid detection, characterisation and control of emerging diseases
5. Maintaining and improving capability to detect, identify and study disease

3. What we will achieve

Through the application of a 5 year programme of work, we will achieve the following broad outcomes:

1. Strengthened controls to minimise the risks of importing disease, improving national biosecurity, and contributing to the protection of our high health status. We will work in partnership with stakeholders to prevent disease being introduced and improve cooperation with other government agencies.

2. Improved surveillance methods for the early detection of disease and where outbreaks do occur, enhanced tools for quickly controlling disease. These will lessen direct costs on aquaculture businesses and help prevent onward spread of disease. We will have robust and tested contingency plans in place ensuring preparedness in the event of an emergency – such as the introduction of an exotic disease.

3. Giving important information about aquatic animal health to stakeholders during farm and fishery inspections, at meetings and conferences including practical ways to reduce disease risks and improve biosecurity practices. More targeted and better use of social media will ensure timely publication of updates on disease outbreaks and other relevant information.

4. Maintaining awareness of global emerging disease threats, working closely with other agencies and researchers around the world, sharing information on emerging disease situations, and collaborating on research projects will be a crucial resource for identifying and understanding new disease threats.

5. Development of the right skills and tools to enable us to protect aquatic animal health. This will include the application of new diagnostic techniques and specialist equipment, increasing our capacity to detect, identify and study disease agents. Practical advances in the field such as electronic data collection by inspectors and working with anglers to exploit new sources of data will greatly improve our knowledge of fish species presence and population structure.

4. Rationale and next steps

We’ve set out the full detailed rationale behind the strategy, together with a detailed list of the actions we will be taking, in a separate document: Aquatic animal health strategy for England - rationale and next steps.