A BIOSECURITY detector dog will be on the job at Cairns International Airport in a bid to help protect Australia's borders from the insidious disease African swine fever.
The labrador, JD, has worked for the Department of Agriculture for eight years and has been redeployed to the Far North to sniff out potentially risky pork products on international flights.
It comes after detector dog Suki was installed at Darwin Airport earlier this month when African swine fever was detected in East Timor, just 700km from Australia's mainland.
North Queensland based Senator Susan McDonald last week queried whether detector dogs would be deployed to airports in areas like Cairns, which received direct flights from ASF affected countries, during Senate Estimates.
Ms McDonald said she was pleased the federal government had acted quickly to deploy a dog to Cairns.
"ASF is at our doorstep, by the end of this year it's estimated it will have killed a quarter of the world's pig population, and it has been detected less than 1000km away from Australia in Timor-Leste," Ms McDonald said.
"Our government is combating the threat of this horrendous disease by boosting our biosecurity effort at international airports, and JD is a critical part of that for Cairns."
Leichhardt MP Warren Entsch said Cairns Airport would greatly benefit from the addition of the new detector dog.
"Each year we see around 360,000 passengers arrive at Cairns airport, and in 2018, 3,800 of them were found to be carrying biosecurity risk items," Mr Entsch said.
"The new detector dog will add an extra layer of assurance to our existing screening measures helping to ensure that no ASF contaminated pork products or other biosecurity threats enter the country.
"It is not just about ASF, Cairns is a thriving tourism destination and we need to make sure that we are doing everything we can to protect our agriculture and our native flora and fauna from the threat of exotic pests and diseases."
JD has previously worked at Sydney International Airport and mail centre and also the Brisbane Airport.
In his eight years of service, he has sniffed out over 9,869 biosecurity risk items including 2,216 undeclared meat items.
