National Sheep Health Monitoring Project

Summary

The National Sheep Health Monitoring Project (NSHMP) has had a successful 18 months of operation, with over nine million sheep inspected outside of South Australia for the 19 conditions inspected for. The NSHMP currently monitors around 25% of all sheep (lamb and mutton) slaughtered in Australia (when South Australia is included). All animal health data has been entered in the Endemic Disease Information System (EDIS), which has then been included in the Livestock Data Link (LDL) portal, making it available to producers submitting direct lines to participating abattoirs.

The NSHMP will continue as an Animal Health Australia (AHA) project, with future work being focused on data collection accuracy and validation, as well as extension to producers on the conditions, potential economic impacts to their enterprises, and what they can do to mitigate risks. This will include the benefits of adopting biosecurity and other management practices to help minimise the prevalence of inspected conditions, if they are present in their sheep. The conditions inspected for in the NSHMP are estimated to cost producers and processors over $110 million annually, so it is likely that significant benefits to industry will result when this feedback is acted upon.