Blog icon

The challenge

Being prepared for an emergency animal disease outbreak

The diagnostic skills and knowledge of scientists at CSIRO's Australian Centre for Disease Preparedness (ACDP) form an important component of Australia's preparedness to deal with an emergency animal disease outbreak.

Scientist performing a bacteriological test in the Diagnostic Emergency Response Laboratory.

Despite Australia's strict quarantine procedures, there is still a risk that an exotic (foreign) animal disease could be introduced into Australia.

The potential impacts, dependent on the disease, include illness in humans, domestic animals and wildlife and cost to the economy of billions of dollars through loss of trade, tourism and other costs associated with recovery from a disease outbreak. Our work protects the health of Australia's livestock, aquaculture species and wildlife to ensure the competitiveness our agriculture and trade.

Our response

Diagnostic and disease response strategies

ACDP plays an integral role in investigating exotic and emergency disease incidents, allowing such diseases to be ruled out or to ensure rapid implementation of control strategies.

We also provide diagnostic testing services for surveillance programs such as the National Arbovirus Monitoring Program (NAMP), the Northern Australia Quarantine Strategy (NAQS) and the National Transmissible Spongiform Encephalopathies (TSE) Surveillance Program.

Our facility has also been crucial in identifying and characterising new diseases including Hendra Virus, Australian Bat Lyssavirus, Pilchard Herpes Virus and Abalone Herpes Virus.

Quality assured diagnostic tests are critical to the success of surveillance programs and to the accurate diagnosis and control of disease outbreaks.

ACDP's sensitive, accurate and rapid diagnostic tests are managed under a quality assurance system certified to the ISO/IEC 9001:2015 standard and accredited by the National Association of Testing Authorities (NATA) to the ISO/IEC 17025:2017 standard.

The facilities at ACDP are purpose built to ensure that we can fulfil our role in responding quickly and effectively to disease outbreaks, whilst still meeting our quality assurance standards.

In keeping with this, a state-of-the-art high throughput testing laboratory, the Diagnostic Emergency Response Laboratory (DERL), was opened in 2008.

DERL can be operated in two different modes – routine or outbreak – dependent on the circumstances.

Contact us

Find out how we can help you and your business. Get in touch using the form below and our experts will get in contact soon!

CSIRO will handle your personal information in accordance with the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) and our Privacy Policy.


First name must be filled in

Surname must be filled in

I am representing *

Please choose an option

Please provide a subject for the enquriy

0 / 100

We'll need to know what you want to contact us about so we can give you an answer

0 / 1900

You shouldn't be able to see this field. Please try again and leave the field blank.