Intervet Australia Enters Aquatic Animal Health Market

Servicing almost exclusively the Australian animal health industry, Intervet Australia offers a broad range of vaccines and pharmaceuticals, with approximately 40% of the business being generated from vaccines manufactured in Bendigo. All types of vaccines are manufactured within the versatile manufacturing building, ranging from live freeze-dried vaccines for dogs, cats and poultry, to inactivated cattle, pig and sheep vaccines. The company continues to invest heavily in vaccine development, with no less than 12 new vaccines for five animal species in various stages of development and registration. A new Pilot Laboratory was completed in July, 2005 to help reduce time to market.

One area of animal health that Intervet Australia had not yet explored was that of aquatic animal health (AAH) relating to the aquaculture industry. While it was obvious that this sector was growing in Australia, its size was previously considered too small. However, with government-supported aquaculture production increasing rapidly in Australia and with a need for vaccine solutions to the accompanying disease problems in finfish, Intervet Australia looked at the possibility of making full use of its GMP standards and marrying it to the AAH expertise already within Intervet. Indeed, the Australian government recently brought in legislation that will ensure that all fish vaccines are manufactured according to GMP standards.

In early 2005, Intervet Australia was approached by Marine Harvest (who has a large barramundi operation in the Northern Territory, sourcing their fingerlings from the Darwin Aquaculture Centre) to manufacture an autogenous Streptococcus iniae vaccine. The vaccine had to be autogenous because the strict quarantine laws of Australia do not allow any importation of vaccines or vaccine strains without lengthy, rigorous and often expensive evaluations. With the help of Intervet Norbio Singapore, the first batch was manufactured, delivered to the farming company and used to successfully vaccinate 220,000 fish in July, 2005. Since then, vaccination has been employed as part of their health management programme.

Subsequent to this first step into the world of AAH, Intervet Australia has had several more requests for fish vaccines, typically for barramundi and salmon, against a variety of bacterial pathogens. The tremendous support that Intervet Australia has received from the AAH R&D sites in Singapore and Bergen continues to impress the Australian fish farmer customers, thus encouraging the initiative by Intervet Australia to enter the fish vaccine market in the relatively early days of the industry.

Relatively speaking, the Australian aquaculture market remains small by global terms. However, it continues to grow with increasing financial support from both State and Federal governments, and Intervet Australia plans to walk hand in hand with the industry as it continues to develop.

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