This is the fourth time the fruit fly has landed here since 2012, and the first time since then that it has involved more than a solitary individual. If this attempt to colonise is unsuccessful it must be only a matter of time before the fruit fly wins, unless, perhaps, those who say they have the answer are listened to.
Labour and the Greens have labelled current biosecurity measures as "flimsy" and have plenty of support for that view. Three years ago then Horticulture New Zealand president Andrew Fenton noted that successive fruit fly discoveries in 1996 prompted the introduction of biosecurity x-rays of all luggage of airline passengers arriving from Australia. No flies were found for the next 16 years, but in 2011 the government stopped x-raying all baggage. One fly was found the following year, two in 2014 and three so far this year.
Calls are now coming from all quarters for the introduction of x-raying all baggage from Australia, at least during the high risk season of January to April, and the Greens want a ban on all fruit and vegetable imports from Australia until stronger measures are in place. Why is it though that the mere hint of a problem of some kind in this country leads to the closing of overseas markets to our produce, while we seem happy to keep importing stuff that demonstrably has devastating potential? How long has Australia banned our apples because of the risk of transferring fire blight, which we insist they can't catch because we haven't got it?
We are told that our horticulture industry is worth $6 billion a year, not counting what home owners grow on their own properties, and that an insect such as the Queensland fruit fly could effectively wipe out that industry, not only by destroying fruit but more significantly by closing markets to our exports. So how come Australia can keep sending us infested stuff with impunity?
It's not only the fruit fly that has hitched its way here in recent times. Last month a Marton girl found a couple of weevils in an Australian mango that her mother had bought at the local supermarket. Horticulture New Zealand responded to that with the warning that mangos were also a potential host for fruit flies, but the MPI simply asked the youngster to send the live weevil - she had killed the other one - to them for inspection. Apparently the ministry's reaction could partly be attributed to the fact that the insects were found over a weekend.
More recently a West Auckland woman bought a packet of Australian grapes that was found to contain a live redback spider. The ministry's advice was to freeze and forward it. The woman wondered, quite reasonably, what else might be getting into New Zealand if a redback could make it. The response? An internal audit by Countdown had established that the grapes had arrived as part of a shipment that had been treated appropriately then inspected and cleared by the MPI. The ministry said all grapes imported from Australia were fumigated with sulphur dioxide and carbon dioxide, and a proportion were visually inspected, but "very occasionally things do get through, despite treatment and inspection." No kidding. It would be nice to know how some insects survive the process that is supposed to kill them, and how much faith we can have in a system of visual checking that gives survivors obviously reasonable odds of making it to the family fruit bowl.
Two live redbacks had been found in the previous six months, one in a garden in Rotorua and the second in an empty Australian shipping container in Wellington. Who knows what became of the container's possibly redback-infested contents?
To be fair there are already two established redback populations here, in Taranaki and Central Otago, so maybe a few more don't matter much. Even so the ministry's relaxed attitude on this and other occasions does not inspire great confidence. It is a little more comforting to hear that more stringent assessment measures were introduced at airports last week; all luggage is now being x-rayed and another detector dog has been hired. Hopefully that will be on-going rather than a temporary response to a crisis.
Meanwhile the Queensland fruit fly is probably one of the biggest threats to horticulture in this country that can be imagined. The adults lay eggs in ripe fruit - almost any fruit will do; they're not especially fussy - the maggots then burrowing into the flesh and turning it to pulp, which renders the fruit inedible. It goes far beyond scarring of the skin that might make it unattractive and unexportable.
Once the fly establishes itself here it will never be eradicated. No other undesirable immigrant ever has been. At the very least it will make fruit more expensive in that growers will have to spray against them, but the real damage will be done by the closing of export markets. That's what the MPI is charged with fighting for, continued access to overseas markets that, once closed in response to a perceived biosecurity threat, may never open again. This is a high stakes game, one that we cannot afford to lose. So it's time we took it more seriously, and cut Australian produce from our household menu if they can't provide what we want without threatening one of our key industries.
One does not have to be an expert to see that organisms are travelling from one country to another much more easily now than they did in the past, largely thanks to ease of transport, and, to some extent perhaps, less than stringent precautions in some parts of the world. That makes effective defences more important than ever.
And it's not as if we're not doing our bit. Our export markets demand very high standards of our producers. It is only right that we demand the same standards of those who wish to sell to us.
