When you import a car or any other object to Australia, it undergoes a strict quarantine inspection, along with other formalities. What is the reason?
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Why Quarantine?
Australia is an island country and is far away from other countries in the world. It is not in physical contact with any other land in the world. This has offered Australia an ecosystem that is exclusive to this country.
If animals, plants or seeds or spores from other countries enter this ecosystem, this unique ecosystem will be contaminated and will no longer remain unique. Therefore, Australian authorities are extremely careful about not allowing such materials in the country.
These materials can enter the country either through humans that enter the country from outside or goods that are imported.
Therefore, these things undergo quarantine inspection to check if they carry any foreign living organism that can contaminate the ecosystem here. If an item is found to carry such an organism, that item should undergo quarantine cleaning.
Process of Quarantine Cleaning
It’s interesting to know how quarantine cleaning is done and what the processes involved in it are. Here they are.
Quarantine Treatment
If you want your item to pass the quarantine inspection at the airport or harbour, you can get quarantine cleaning services from Dazmac Logistics for example. Such a cleaning changes an item chemically, physically or biologically.
In general, the treatment will help eliminate quarantine risks by:
Physically eliminating material that houses the organisms that carry the quarantine risk (for example, cleaning dirt from a used motor car)
Killing the organisms that carry quarantine risk (for example, fumigation using methyl bromide to destroy living insects)
Irradiation
Another form of treatment is irradiation that can be conducted on importation. It involves exposing the items in question to gamma rays from radioactive isotopes like Cobalt-60. The function of gamma rays is to cause a breakdown of DNA and RNA that are vital for the life of any living organism (including viruses).
Another speciality of gamma rays is that their wavelength is extremely short and hence they can easily penetrate packaging materials.
Moreover, gamma irradiation does not cause any significant rise in the temperature of the objects undergoing the treatment and also doesn’t turn the objects radioactive.
Irradiation is an effective treatment provided it doesn’t alter the nature of the object for the analysis that will follow. It doesn’t suit samples to be analysed in the OSL laboratory.
Heat Treatment
Heat treatment is another common technique to release an object from a QAP (Quarantine Approved Premise) carried out in a small hot air laboratory oven reserved for AQIS (Australian Quarantine and Inspection Service) material.
It is done in a calibrated oven at no less than 160°C for no less than two hours. It is also done for some objects that have come in contact with quarantine materials. All heat treatments should be done at a QAP. Ovens should be repeatedly calibrated with an official temperature probe.
Heat treatment is not suitable to samples going through amino acid racemization analysis.
Autoclaving
In autoclaving, high pressure, high temperature and steam are used to destroy organisms. It has the ability to kill bacteria, fungi, seeds, snails, viruses and insects. Therefore this method can be used to treat high-risk material like soil, various types of waste materials and any contaminated equipment.
Autoclaving method doesn’t use any toxic chemicals and still effectively destroys any quarantine concerns without any dangerous emissions or byproducts that need to be disposed of after the treatment.
Autoclaving is also used in places like hospitals and laboratories for sterilising equipment that regularly handle materials like cell cultures.
Quarantine cleaning is thus a complex process and therefore importing cars to Australia with Dazmac Logistics is recommended because they make the process easier and you get the desired peace of mind.