Importer fined $119,000 for deception over agricultural chemicals

A Pukekohe man who illegally imported and sold counterfeit agricultural chemicals has been fined $119,000 in a case brought by the New Zealand Food Safety Authority.

Mark Freeman and the company of which he was sole director, Global Hort Imports NZ, initially pleaded not guilty to a total of five charges under the Agricultural Compounds and Veterinary Medicines Act 1997, before changing the plea to guilty three days into a trial.

In the Manukau District Court yesterday, Judge Jane Lovell-Smith fined Freeman $25,000 on two charges of selling agricultural compounds that were not the registered trade name products, and $4000 for giving false or misleading information to an inspector.

The company was fined $70,000 for selling agricultural compounds that were not the registered trade name products and $20,000 for giving false or misleading information to an inspector.

Judge Lovell-Smith said Freeman's conduct was the most serious type of offending under the act.

This was sustained, calculated and comprehensive illegal conduct which undermined the integrity of New Zealand's regulatory oversight of the horticultural trade and New Zealand's reputation for safe, high-quality produce, she said.

The court was told Freeman imported two shipments of counterfeit agricultural chemicals from China in 2005 and 2006 which he falsely labelled as fertiliser.

Fertilisers are exempt from the need for registration as a trade name product.

The shipments totalled 19,300 litres and were worth about $213,000. Freeman sold the first lot of chemicals as pesticides to four South Auckland vegetable growers.

The authority received information about the second shipment and seized it before it was distributed.

Its director of compliance and investigation, Geoff Allen, said he was very pleased with the ruling, which followed three years of work.

"This ruling sends a clear signal to the industry that the illegal importation of agricultural chemicals will not be tolerated by the courts and we commend that," Dr Allen said.

Authority tests found the products' active ingredients were similar to registered products, but some had marked variations in concentration and purity.

Dr Allen said none of the chemicals would have posed unacceptable health risks to users or consumers of the crops treated with them, as long as they were used in the same way as the genuine registered products.

"But Mr Freeman had no way of knowing this and there is no guarantee subsequent imports would have been safe."

- NZPA