On 14 August, our staff attended Exercise Harvest Shield 2.0 in Tauranga. This exercise brought together the key groups that would be working together in the event of a biosecurity response to Brown Marmorated Stink Bug (BMSB) in New Zealand.

As the preferred provider of both surveillance and response to BMSB for MPI, SPS Biota was keen to go along to share our expertise and help look for any gaps. This way we can ensure to be as ready as possible.

Two of our dedicated surveillance coordinators, Darryn Horrell (above) and Dominic Hartnett (below), arrived early and set up example traps so that the policy writers and decision makers could see how we hunt for BMSB in the wild. They also gave presentations on the success of the current surveillance program, and the readiness work we have been doing to improve our response capability.

It was great to meet with all the key players in a potential BMSB response, and we left with some great ideas and connections to help make us even more prepared.