New Biosecurity Fines and More TF Security Requirements

Post by: Burnard Intl.

In the latest edition of MPI's Biosecurity's See, Contain, Report - (November edition) there are significant changes proposed in the transitional facility (TF) area that may affect some of you. Plus information on new Biosecurity fines and more TF security requirements. 

New Biosecurity Fines  

At present, MPI only infringes air passengers who fail to properly declare risk goods they bring into New Zealand. From 2019, MPI plans to introduce new biosecurity infringement offences in other pathways, including TFs. The introduction of infringements in other pathways will send a strong message about the critical nature of compliance and will deter people and organisations from breaking the rules. The infringements will be applied for offending that is not significant enough to warrant prosecution.

The fines are proposed to be $400 for individuals and $800 for companies. There are two new infringement offences that will allow us to infringe companies operating TFs or TF Operators. This would be for those TFs who do not have an approved TF Operator or those Operators who do not comply with applicable operating standards (details on what will be infringed to be finalised). Note that when Operators identify non-compliances and immediately take preventative actions, they would not be issued an infringement.

More TF Security Requirements

Last year, MPI announced a security crackdown to help prevent uncleared risk goods (including containers) from being wrongly released or stolen and to prevent undetected contaminants or pests from escaping. TFGEN currently states that risk goods must be kept in a secure manner at all times. Currently, a number of TFs do not have systems to prevent members of the public from gaining access to uncleared containers (e.g. TFs in business parks that have no fences or gates). This is in comparison to some larger TFs where the boundary is security fenced and patrolled, and access is tightly controlled at gated entry points operated on a 24/7 basis. Security requirements will be further strengthened to give MPI increased confidence that uncleared risk goods at a TF are fully secure at all times from unauthorised entry by unapproved persons.

To meet the new security requirements TFs must:

1. Devan the container inside a secure building

or

1. Hold a container in a secure fully fenced (at least 1.8m high) area
2. Have a lockable gate
3. Lock the container, for example, secure with a substantial padlock

In addition to the above, MPI encourage the use of alarm systems, security cameras, etc. We realise there are costs to meet these requirements so MPI will allow until 1 September 2019 for existing TFs to comply. After this date, MPI will cancel TFs if they do not meet these new requirements. Any new TF application will need to meet these requirements. MPI may consider equivalent options to ensure security requirements can be meet.

Please see the below link for full information. https://ministryforprimaryindu...