By PHILIP ENGLISH
Customs, New Zealand Post, Fisheries and Quarantine Service staff will work together to stop black-market seafood being posted overseas.
The agencies want to find out if any lessons can be learned from the paua-smuggling operation uncovered by Fisheries officers.
Nearly 600 tonnes of paua was illegally posted to Hong
Kong in 120 mailings of frozen 18kg vacuum-sealed parcels in NZ Post handiboxes.
A 42-year-old man born in China has appeared in the Auckland District Court in connection with the operation. It is understood he will seek bail today.
Investigations are continuing into a further 200 mailings involving more than six tonnes of paua meat from 80,000 to 100,000 individual paua shellfish.
A Customs spokeswoman, Janice Rodenburg, said Customs would talk to New Zealand Post and Fisheries staff to try to better identify such shipments.
The idea was to find some way to show postal staff how to spot such packages. But she said Customs had limited resources and its priority was on checking imports rather than exports.
The Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry Quarantine Service, which had a set of controls over food exports, could also help.
