Couples turn detective to expose seed danger

By SIMON COLLINS

This is a story about South Auckland neighbours who saw official regulations being flouted - and did something about it.

Mangatawhiri farmers Mark and Jane Holmes, and their neighbours Lynnette and Phil Baird, have proved that the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry (MAF) ignored its own rules to allow imported Australian barley laced with noxious weeds to be stored next door to them in July last year.

The 19 weeds included the highly poisonous Mexican poppy, regarded as one of the world's worst weeds, and the prolific Paterson's curse (also known as Salvation Jane), which hay sellers can be fined $10,000 for spreading in Australia. None was on MAF's quarantine list.

It took the couples a year's investigation, with intervention by the Ombudsman to make MAF release vital documents. But as a result of their research and persistence, the ministry has officially admitted that:

* Its biosecurity standards "were out of date and required urgent review and amendment".

* The grain silo next to the Holmes and Baird properties did not meet the required standards and the ministry "may have issued the approval ultra vires [without authority]".

* The ministry "did not correctly apply procedures for inspection and approval of facilities or routinely monitor each activity within the discharge, transportation, security and storage of the bulk grain shipment".

* The ministry "did not have documented procedures for sampling bulk grain in accordance with the International Seed Testing Association principles".

* The staff who did the testing were not accredited to the association.

* The ministry's records "were insufficient to enable trace-back of all activities associated with the importation, transportation, security and storage of bulk grain".

As a result, MAF has promised to review its standards, procedures and record keeping to ensure the mistakes will not be repeated.

By itself, the shipment of 9000 tonnes of Australian barley, part of which was stored at the Mangatawhiri silo in July last year, does not appear to have done any harm.

But what makes the case remarkable is that the two couples documented 22 rules that were broken in their 79-page report to MAF. And if they had not taken the trouble to look into it, no one would have cared.

It was, they say, "a biosecurity disaster waiting to happen". If MAF was unable to keep a few weeds out of Mangatawhiri, how effectively is it protecting New Zealand from much more serious threats?

"The regulations are perfect. All you have to do is administer them," says Mark Holmes. "When we put stuff on the market, we have to meet Resource Management Act regulations, minimum standards of chemicals, no residues, etc.

"Yet anyone can get a boatload of barley or wheat from Australia and they are not under the same regulations as we are."

The Mangatawhiri silos, near the Hotel du Vin just off State Highway 2, were built by Mark Holmes' father in the late 1960s to store grain grown by local farmers. The family sold them to grain silo operators some years ago, and they are now owned by Takanini Racing and Stock Feeds Ltd.

In normal years the silos are filled during autumn, when maize and other crops are harvested and stored for use in winter.

But last July the silos were unusually busy.

"A whole lot of trucks started turning up out of season. There was a huge amount of dust spreading all over the farm," says Jane Holmes.

"We happened to be in Auckland one night and were just coming home and my husband said, 'There's one of those trucks that are going to the silos next door.' So we followed it down to the wharf."

At the dock they found a MAF official watching barley being unloaded from the Panama-registered vessel Ken Sho. Jane Holmes challenged him and said, "Do you realise that this is going straight to a farm?

"He said, 'No, it's going to Tuakau.' I said, 'No, it's going to Mangatawhiri.' He said, 'Don't worry, it's only class 2 [passed for processing at MAF-approved premises], what are you worried about?' "

But the Holmes family were worried, because only 15 years ago part of another farm in the district had to be quarantined because of an outbreak of Johnson grass, a tenacious 3m-high grass which displaces good pasture and is considered one of the 10 worst weeds in the world.

That outbreak had been traced back to an imported grain shipment. MAF and the owners of the Mangatawhiri silo agreed at the time to remove the silo's registration as an approved site to store imported grain.

Lynnette Baird, who works for an Auckland fabric company, was familiar with the internet through Phil Baird's job in computers. She looked up the Biosecurity Act and MAF's National Agricultural Security Service regulations on the web.

The law was clear. Class 1 grain could be sent anywhere in the country. But class 2 grain was to be processed "at MAF-approved premises, excluding farms".

Quite apart from the fact that it was in the middle of the Holmes' farm, the Mangatawhiri silo had not had MAF approval to store imported grain since the Johnson grass incident.

Alarm bells rang. Lynnette Baird and the Holmeses rang the local MAF quarantine officer, Les Barber, then sent a long letter to the MAF head office asking why imported grain was being stored at Mangatawhiri.

Dissatisfied with the official reply, Jane Holmes rang a friend who once worked at MAF.

"The easiest way to get information is to go to ex-employees," she learned. "They say, 'It's been going on for years,' and, 'Well, we've always known that'."

Through a combination of the friend and the regulations on the internet, Jane Holmes and Lynnette Baird worked out the names of the documents they needed.

Then they applied under the Official Information Act for copies of the phytosanitary (plant health) certificate and ship's hold inspection certificate recording the cargo on the Ken Sho, the seed tests conducted in Australia and New Zealand showing any weeds in the consignment, the audit certificate MAF had to produce before the Mangatawhiri silo could be used again for imported grain, and the certificate of approval it had to issue.

"MAF were not very co-operative," Mark Holmes says. It took them three months to produce the documents. But Jane Holmes found the answer.

"MAF wouldn't reply to my letters," she says. "So I said, 'I'll go to the Ombudsman.' Then they replied."

Last November, the documents finally arrived. Among other things:

* The phytosanitary certificate showed that the Ken Sho carried 9000 tonnes of barley - 1000 tonnes more than the maximum allowed under the grain import regulations.

* The phytosanitary certificate showed barley stored in two compartments on the Ken Sho, whereas the ship's hold inspection certificate showed it being stored in all four of the ship's compartments. In effect, the grain in the other two compartments appeared to have been imported with no health check at all.

* The Australian seed inspection certificate was dated July 13, 2001, a day after the Ken Sho left Port Giles in South Australia and just five days before it arrived in Auckland. The regulations state that anyone importing grain must provide details of the shipment to an inspector at the proposed port of entry at least 14 days before the ship arrives.

* The Australian certificate was based on a sample of only 4.66kg, slightly less than the required 5kg.

* The Mangatawhiri grain silo was approved again to store imported grain on July 23, 2001 - after the barley arrived at the site over the three days of July 19-21.

* The local grain tests were done by New Zealand Seedlab, a private laboratory in Christchurch, even though the regulations specify that imported grain must be tested at the MAF seed testing station in Palmerston North.

* MAF released 45 seed analysis certificates which it said covered the entire 9000-tonne barley shipment, even though the regulations require testing at least 1kg for every 25 tonnes of grain - which would have required 360 certificates.

* These certificates were used as the basis for upgrading the whole shipment from class 2 to class 1 on September 14, 2001. The regulations allow for upgrading from class 3 to class 2 when few weeds were found, but do not provide for upgrading to class 1 after arrival in New Zealand.

Meanwhile, Lynnette Baird researched the internet to check out MAF's list of noxious weeds.

She found that its quarantine weed seed list had not been updated for nine years, and did not include 19 weeds found on the Ken Sho classed as noxious in various Australian, American, Canadian and European states.

In their 79-page report for MAF, Jane Holmes and Lynnette Baird said: "If New Zealand were as diligent as Australia with protecting our country from the invasion of noxious weeds, the shipment of barley dumped in July 2001 would have been imported as class 3 or class 4 grain. These classifications require the imported grain to be milled to a powder so fine that no viable seeds remain."

Their report includes 69 photographs showing the dust created when grain is loaded into trucks at the Mangatawhiri silos, when the trucks drive away often uncovered, and when the rain washes fragments of grain into the drains that lead into the Mangatawhiri River, and eventually to the Waikato.

Yet the regulations state that silos shall "be of such construction and state of repair so as to prevent the escape of unprocessed grain", "leakproof, birdproof and not subject to flooding", have "sealed areas" for loading and unloading, and grain will be transported only in "approved vehicles".

An inspector is required to make sure unloading is done only in the approved areas. But Holmes and Baird say no MAF inspectors were on the site while the Australian barley was unloaded.

Mark Holmes says: "The slackness has crept into MAF, probably because MAF has become more market-oriented and some of the people who used to look after the weed problems and that have gone. They have been side-shifted or paid out or made redundant."

MAF's acting director of plant biosecurity, Dr Veronica Herrera, agrees that part of the problem is inadequate resources, particularly this year when staff have been diverted on to new rules to check for genetically modified organisms.

This meant that several MAF standards, including the quarantine weed list, were "several years old".

Grain importers have been told that a new prohibited weed list will be issued on September 16, 2002.

Herrera says it is safe to store class 1 grain at Mangatawhiri because it is "very clean" and can be stored anywhere.

But in a written reply to the Herald, she says MAF is "committed to a complete review and update of the standards pertaining to the importation of grain for processing".

"Areas for review will include a complete review of the class system, accreditation of post-entry management systems (including transport from the port, requirements for transitional facilities), supply countries and phytosanitary measures."

The new standard will require grain to be tested at an accredited laboratory - a looser rule than the present standard which requires testing at the MAF laboratory in Palmerston North.

It will lift the 8000-tonne limit on grain shipments because "many consignments" are now bigger than this.

Herrera says officials are also considering allowing grain to be upgraded from class 2 to class 1. However, she says the new rule will not allow officials to accept underweight samples, as happened with the Ken Sho shipment.

"It was agreed that specific training will be provided for sampling officers and it will be ensured that all samples are fully representative."

Patrick Luxton, logistics manager for the Australian company that imported the barley, Jossco, says a Jossco joint venture is building new grain silos inside the Auckland urban area at Takanini, which will remove the need to store imported grain at Mangatawhiri.

"At the time, we acted in line with MAF's requirements. We worked with them," he says. "It was a pretty critical situation for New Zealand with grain shortages, so there was a hell of a premium on storage. That is how we ended up there. We are not interested in using the site in the future."

nzherald.co.nz/environment