Australian Barramundi Farmers Association

On a personal note, I have relinquished my position as Managing Director of Skretting Australia. Following the split of the Australian Nutreco business and the sale of the barramundi business into a new joint venture business of Marine Harvest, I will be taking over as Managing Director of the new company for the next six months to help establish it and set in place expansion plans.
Mr James Rose has been appointed Managing Director of Skretting Australia.
During the last six years James has been the Business Manager of Skretting Australia. I congratulate James on this appointment and hope he continues the close relationship between Skretting and the ABFA.

Naming Rights Campaign
We have now lodged our application with the Fish Names Committee for Barramundi to be exclusively Australian. I was in Brisbane personally to lodge the application.
We managed to get a great deal of media attention for the issue across Australia in print, radio and TV.
We have written to all State ministers where there is a Barramundi industry asking for their support.

Meeting With the Minister MacDonald
The following day Cris Phillips, Trevor Anderson and Graham Dalton had a very useful meeting with Senator MacDonald, the Federal Minister for Fisheries.
We put our case for the naming rights to Barramundi. We got a very good hearing. The critical issue appears to be whether our request is legal under WTO rules. We have asked the Minister and Department to advise.

Survey
Last month I advised that ABFA is repeating the survey of expected production for the year. The data would be very helpful in putting together a briefing note for the Government to persuade them that the Australian Barramundi industry is worth supporting. Unfortunately, only a very small number of producers have responded.
Please complete the survey and return

Conference
We are now organising the joint conference with the Australian Prawn Farmers’ Association.
The details are:

2005 Australian Prawn & Barramundi Conference
The Australian Prawn & Barramundi Conference will be held at the Gold Coast Marriott Resort on 24-26 August, 2005.

We have just emailed to you an outline of the ABFA part of it.

Media Training
At the conference we will be running a media training course for members. Peter Hall from Management Media is one of the most experienced people in this field in the country. He has worked as media advisor with government departments, Ministers, State Premiers, major corporations and Commissions of Inquiry.
The program will cover two key issues. Part of the course will be managing an aggressive media in the face of a PR disaster. For example, how do you respond if the media finds a pollutant in farmed seafood and wants your opinion? What would be your response if you are accused out of the blue of breaching food safety requirements?
The course will also cover putting across a good news story and doing the press releases for that.
Good media skills are an essential part of corporate management in today’s business world and I think it important that our key leaders have the ability to handle issues in the public domain that impact on the industry as a whole and on their businesses. I urge members and management to book for this course, but because of the intensive, hands on approach, places are limited. We are charging $300 to help cover the costs.

Country of Origin Labels
In another bit of madness, the Australian and New Zealand food Safety Authority recommended in a draft report that country of origin labelling for seafood cease to be compulsory!. On one hand we are being told to label Barramundi as Australian rather than to have the name registered to Australian producers, and on the other the government is looking at abolishing the need to display the origins at point of sale.
The ABFA has made a written submission to FSANZ pointing out strongly that people purchasing product labelled Barramundi expect it to be Australian and by not having imports labelled, consumers will be mislead.
However, we need to make our protests known to government in the very strongest terms.
This week Graham Dalton met with a representative from FSANZ at our offices and worked through the points made in our submission. Our submission can be obtained from Graham Dalton and is available on our web site.

R&D
Last year we committed the industry to two R&D directions. The first related to genetics. We have a session at the Conference to work out how to establish a Barramundi stud.
The second issue was water quality – a critical matter for most land based producers. However, it looks like we will need to seek some additional financial support from members for the project.
We will contact land based producers in the next week or so to see if you are interested in supporting the R&D proposal.

New Member
I am pleased to welcome Paradise Aquafarm as a new member of the Association. They are based in Gordonvale in North Queensland. Contact details are:

PO Box 886, GORDONVALE QLD 4865
Ph: [07] 4056 2100
Fax: [07] 4056 2892
Email: tcpg@petos.com.au

Paradise Aquafarm specialises in the production of fingerlings in a modern Hatchery facility near Cairns. The business was established 2 years ago and has built a reputation for high quality Barramundi fingerlings to the aquaculture industry.

Some Queensland News
Queensland producers are supporting the Hilton Hotel’s Master Class program for gourmet foods. About 1,000 food writers, chefs, and food people attend a two day set of classes at the Hilton Hotel taken by leading chefs including invited chefs from US, London and Thailand. Barramundi will be a major feature of the dinner.

President’s Letter – May 2005