Letter From The President - January 2005

I trust every one had a good break and I guess we are all flat out again. Your Association has also been very busy. A short report follows. I will give a longer one at the half yearly Conference.

Conference

We have completed the agenda and arrangements for the Innisfail workshop on genetics and the following half yearly meeting. The dates are 16 Feb to 18 Feb (late in the day). It is still not too late for members to register.

We have over 30 people coming and a great program.

We are also working with Australian Prawn Farmers Association on the joint annual conference for later in the year.

Media and Promotion

We have kept up our aim of having one story a month go out. We have got good coverage, but mostly in Queensland. We got a story in the Courier Mail, and good coverage on ABC for the conference.

How to progress this will be a major agenda item for our meeting.

Barramundi Standards

The report on standards has now been printed. Minister Senator Macdonald has agreed to launch this at Innisfail.

Accreditation of Queensland Laws

The Queensland aquaculture industry has been working to have state laws and development approval processes approved under Great Barrier Reef legislation and by Environment Australia under EPBC legislation. This will immediately impact on half of our members and is likely to provide templates for future environmental standards for aquaculture in other states at some future time. Hence, Graham Dalton will be putting in some time looking after ABFA interests in this process.

Web Page

We have engaged a company to update the Web page. You should start seeing the improvements over the next few weeks

See you in Innisfail

Best regards

Craig Foster
President