The Biosecurity Business Pledge now has a formal activity programme to support Pledge members progress their commitment to integrate proactive biosecurity practices into their business culture and operations.

The kiwifruit industry (including KVH, Zespri and Trevelyan’s) is active within the Pledge partnership and KVH’s Leanne Stewart is the Chair of a new programme project focused on supporting leaders and executive teams to install good biosecurity within their businesses.

The aim of the project is to design training materials and/or formal courses that individual businesses can use to understand their biosecurity responsibilities; measures for reporting biosecurity risk; and templates so that leaders and directors can seek biosecurity reporting from their management teams.

There are two other programme projects – one focused on ensuring businesses have easy access to collateral and educaton material that helps them raise awareness with their own staff, customers, and public; and the other aimed at developing guidance material to help businesses include biosecurity expectations and targeted outcomes in their operational policies, documentation and supplier engagements/contracts.

KVH supports the Pledge partnership as it is key to helping all New Zealand businesses take a proactive approach to their biosecurity practices and provides a framework for managing the risk of unwanted pests and diseases (plant or animal) disrupting individual businesses and/or having flow-on effects that could potentially affect whole industries, including our own.