According to Australian Associated Press, industry experts insisted yesterday that quarantine inspectors must immediately prohibit raw prawn imports to prevent the spread of diseases into Australian crustacean stocks.

The Australian Prawn Farmers Association (Apfa) warned that government testing of imported raw prawns late last year found 100 per cent were carrying exotic diseases, such as the white spot syndrome virus.

These diseases, Apfa said, could quickly devastate the Australian industry.

Late last week, the Thai government sent a trade negotiating team to hold talks with Australian government agencies to withdraw that country's stringent measures, reasoning that the measures were aimed at protecting only a small group of shrimp farmers in Australia but would directly hit consumers.

In submissions to quarantine regulator Biosecurity Australia's draft import risk analysis on raw imported prawns, Apfa executive officer Scott Walter said strict interim import conditions needed to be introduced immediately. "Australia is an island nation with a mainland coastline of 36,000 kilometres, including the World Heritage-listed Great Barrier Reef, with many species of crustaceans that are vulnerable to exotic disease," Walter said.

"Australia's disease-free status is highly valued and well worth defending in the interests of future food production and preserving native seafood resources for future generations.

"It is entirely responsible of the quarantine watchdog to put the onus on importers to prove that product they are bringing into this country is not carrying diseases when the CSIRO [Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation] has estimated these diseases have an economic impact of 15 billion Australian dollars [Bt400 billion] to $30 billion internationally."

Walter said that most of the diseased prawns coming into Australia had originated from China, Thailand, Vietnam and Indonesia. The import risk analysis does not propose the banning of all imports, and heat-treated prawns will be accepted without question, he added.

These proposals will be more in line with other countries including Mexico, Colombia and Nicaragua, which all have mandatory disease testing of frozen prawn imports, he said.