ITOC and Border Security

What measures are being taken to protect our borders especially from the threats to our primary sector ? We look at the Integrated Targeting and Operations Centre and the graduation of some new detector dogs.

Our border is critical to New Zealand’s prosperity. Over $80 billion in trade and 10 million travellers cross it each year. It’s estimated that approximately 600,000 sea containers come in a year. Each one of those passengers and containers of goods could contain a potential threat to our primary industries.

In 2001, the Reserve Bank estimated that a foot-and-mouth disease outbreak could cost the economy $10 billion over two years. Thousands of jobs would be put at risk, and the economy would take years to recover.

We have already seen the damage caused by the varroa mite to our bee keeping industry and horticultural and agricultural sectors. Psyllid has had an equally devastating impact on potato, tomato and other associated horticultural crops.

Psa which apparently came into NZ in infected pollen is estimated to cost the industry between $310 million and $410m over the next five years, and more than double that in the long term for lost development opportunities.

According to David Carter in a recent speech to Federated Farmer, a staggering 175,000 items come across our border each day. He says that even with a carefully protected border, some new threats will get through.

He says the challenge is that we must continue to get the right balance between facilitating tourism and trade while keeping New Zealand safe from pests and diseases.

Governmental agencies try to counter biosecurity risk at three levels.

Offshore they try to make sure that imports such as tomatoes from Queensland are treated before the fruit is freighted to New Zealand.

The next level is at the border – inspecting products coming in, physically looking for any infestation right through to stopping people carrying produce through the arrivals hall at the airport.

The final level of the system is surveillance and detection.

The Integrated Targeting and Operations Centre (ITOC) is designed to enhance the government’s ability to protect our safety and security through more effective border control 24 hours a day.

The idea is that everything needed to determine risks presented by people, goods, or craft, is brought together in the one place.

ITOC is a multi-agency facility with a focus on collaboration and information sharing. Its aim is to develop an integrated view of border risk and for border agencies (including Customs, MPI, Immigration, Maritime New Zealand) and to have as much information, as early as possible, to inform targeting decisions. It operates 24 hours a day.

The key function according to the publicity is to support the command and co-ordination of border operations across NZ. They target and profile passengers and trade, and use the intelligence gathered to target risks to the borders.

ITOC also provides planning and co-ordination so that the on-ground staff are focusing on risks and priorities and not interfering too much with legitimate travelers and the flow of trade across the border.MPI currently has 10 staff located at the ITOC who develop risk profiles to refine how we target and detect risk. This information is designed to assist Quarantine Inspectors in targeting known people and goods of increased risk as they cross the border.

The team operates across cargo, mail, passenger, and vessel pathways to help ensure that people and companies with an increased likelihood of non-compliance do not pass through biosecurity checks at the border without a heightened level of intervention.

For example:

• If a passenger is found to have undeclared risk material at the airport, and that person also imports goods through the cargo pathway, not only will the person be inspected the next time they travel – their cargo may also be targeted for inspection.

• Attempts to import risk material through the mail pathway may lead to a person being inspected at the airport when they return from overseas.

• MPI receives pre-arrival information for all international vessels planning to arrive in New Zealand. ITOC staff evaluate each vessel’s risk and provide guidance to frontline Quarantine Inspectors about whether the vessel should be inspected and if so, what aspects of the vessel to target. The outcomes from all vessel inspections are provided back to ITOC to inform the risk evaluation next time the vessel arrives in New Zealand. Vessels with a strong history of compliance have the opportunity to move to reduced inspection rates, whereas non-compliant vessels will be subject to much more rigorous inspection.

B3 (Better Border Security) is the science arm of border security. This was set up in 2005 to look at areas like containment and eradication. It also tries to define pathways of import that pose the greatest threat. This includes use of DNA technologies to discover where things have come from and what they are.

During our earlier story about B3 we heard that there are a number of pests and diseases that we don’t know a lot about which, when they get to NZ , could turn into very serious pests because there are no natural controls here.

Five labradors will graduate from MPI’s detector dog programme on 20 July. Four of the dogs are from a litter of 11 puppies born on 6 October 2010 under a new MPI breeding programme. MPI plan to have the next litter of labradors born around November 2012 .

The MPI detector dog programme will continue to operate with both Labrador and Beagle breeds as they both bring benefits to the programme.

Beagles have a high food drive and are a non-threatening smaller dog that has proven success in our Airports.

Labradors have both a high food and play drive with a sociable nature. They are a larger and physically stronger dog that is more suited to a wider range of environments.

The training of these dogs consists of 20 days of basic pre-training, which involves learning the scents of approximately 10 base odours. This is followed by six weeks of training and worksite familiarisation with experienced handlers.

The graduating dogs will be allocated to new handlers in August. They will then have a further 8-10 weeks training to form effective working partnerships across various worksites.

Upon deployment, they will have an odour repertoire of over 35 base odours (eg. base odour “citrus” will include all varieties of citrus in fresh and dried form).