| Abstract |
Pre-border and border controls reduce (but do not eliminate) the risk of biosecurity threats entering a country, so regulators must prepare for the eventuality of pests and disease incursions. Post-border surveillance is the primary tool used to detect new outbreaks, delimit and manage existing outbreaks, declare eradication success, and provide evidence to trading partners that a threat is absent to gain or maintain market access. This chapter outlines the three broad types of post-border surveillance (active, general, and passive) and reviews their pros and cons. General and passive surveillance are useful sources of first detections but are of limited use for inferring the likelihood of threat absence, due to issues with unknown surveillance reliability and effort. Active surveillance can be used to inform multiple surveillance objectives, but its cost restricts its use to small geographic areas and high-risk threats. Overall, the amount of surveillance to be implemented depends on the objective of surveillance, the reliability of the surveillance method, and the regulator's tolerance for failing to detect a threat that is present. For all objectives, the surveillance strategy and effort required should represent best value for money (i.e. minimising the costs of surveillance and potential costs associated with the threat).
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