With Australia on red alert for potential imports of foot and mouth disease, African swine fever and an increasing array of other exotic animal and food crop pests, detector dogs have become an increasingly valuable front line of defence.

Last financial year they intercepted about 16,000 biosecurity risk items.

The most detected items included meat, seeds and fruit which could all carry pests and diseases that would seriously harm our environment, agricultural industries and economy if they established in Australia.

"Being a detector dog handler and working with dogs daily is a fun job that plays an important role in Australia's biosecurity system," said first assistant secretary of biosecurity operations at the department, Colin Hunter.

"With international travel increasing following the opening of borders after COVID, and increased volumes in the mail and seaport pathways, the department requires additional dog handlers to join the front line of biosecurity."

The dogs work fast, are versatile and mobile, playing a key role in strengthening Australia's biosecurity systems in response to the growing biosecurity threat.

They are trained to detect biosecurity risks spanning more than 200 individual commodities, including fresh fruit, fresh vegetables, fresh plant material (including cuttings), viable seeds and bulbs, meat, eggs, and one of our top priority plant pests, the brown marmorated stink bug.

Traditionally to get a biosecurity detector dog handler's job at airports, mail centres or sea ports around Australia, applicants needed to be a fully accredited and operational biosecurity officer.

Until now, recruiting for these positions was an internal process, but a new recruitment round is open to the general public, with anybody interested urged to to apply.

"It's a great opportunity to join this specialised team and work with amazing canine and human colleagues to help protect Australia against biosecurity risks," Mr Hunter said.

"We're looking for candidates who are engaging, resilient and results driven."

IN OTHER NEWS:

He said Australia's detector dog program was world class in detecting biosecurity risk items in the airport, seaport and mail pathways.

On average, detector dogs were likely to find up to 9000 biosecurity risk items during their working lives.

"The biosecurity detector dog program is just one of the detection tools used by our department," Mr Hunter said.

"This year our detector dog program celebrates 30 years of helping to protect Australia from exotic pests and diseases, which is definitely a paws for a celebration.