Changing what we eat is one of the most effective ways to lower our carbon footprint Food production has a significant carbon footprint. Farmed shellfish have the potential to be a low-impact part of our diet. They are nutritionally rich, high in protein, and can be grown without supplementary feeds – taking what they need to develop directly from the water column.

This report updates the 2009 report Economic Costs of Pests to New Zealand. The report assessed the total economic costs of pests to New Zealand, both defensive expenditures and output losses. The report will be used to support the review of the Biosecurity Act, and provides information to support other Departments, regional councils, and primary sector industries to understand the impacts of pests.

Information was compiled on Listeria prevalence in an expanded definition of ready-to-eat (RTE) salads to include pre-dressed and fruit RTE salads. New Zealand studies have reported low prevalence of L. monocytogenes in packaged fruit salads and Listeria spp. from bagged leafy salads. Sprouted seeds and RTE fruit salads, particularly those containing melon, may represent more significant risks, but these foods are yet to be identified as risk factors in notified cases of listeriosis in NZ.

This study used deep learning to provide an automatic estimation of age for hoki and snapper through a convolutional neural network (CNN). A reference library of otolith images from ~1060 hoki and 520 snapper was generated for use in the CNN. Results from models using these images suggest that deep learning has the potential to support the automation of fish ageing, although further research is required to build an operational tool useful for routine fish ageing.