Irate vege growers say new import strategy leaves NZ open to fly

3.00pm

New Zealand vegetable growers say a $2 billion horticultural export sector has been put at risk by agriculture bureaucrats who have rushed through a new import management strategy for a wide range of tomatoes.

Vegetable and Potato Growers' Federation (Vegfed) chairman Tony Ivicevich said today the new import strategy had left the nation exposed to Queensland fruitfly.

"What is at stake here is the security of our border from Queensland fruit fly, because this is where the majority of tomatoes exported to New Zealand will come from," he said in a statement.

Any management system for such imports needed to be robust and correct from the outset, but the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry (MAF) had approved the strategy before the vegetable industry had completed its technical comments on the new protocol.

Mr Ivicevich said Vegfed was taking legal advice over its lost opportunity to complete its technical comments on the protocol, and suggested it had been hurried through for the benefit of Prime Minister Helen Clark's trip to Australia today.

"It is interesting that the sign-off occurred the day before the prime minister heads to Australia on her trade and business repair mission," Mr Ivicevich said.

Miss Clark went to Australia today with a 22-member business delegation that will visit Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane. She returns to Auckland on Friday night. While building new commercial links is the major goal, part of the trip will be aimed at healing trans-Tasman rifts in the wake of the Ansett collapse, the rugby world cup hosting row and other contentious issues.

But a spokeswoman for Agriculture Minister Jim Sutton said today that his office was not able to influence biosecurity issues, which had to be decided on scientific grounds.

"The new import management strategy for tomatoes has been worked on for a long time, and it has not been done to fit in with the prime minister's visit across the Tasman," she said.

The row became public today when MAF's director of plants biosecurity, Richard Ivess, said that after a decade's negotiation, New Zealand had approved access to all varieties of Australian tomatoes.

He said the amendment to the current import health standard (IHS) for the importation of Australian tomatoes into New Zealand was signed off on Monday, after considerable effort on behalf of the Australian Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry (AFFA) to ensure that effective treatment systems were in place to protect New Zealand from Queensland fruitfly.

But Mr Ivicevich said the horticulture industry had contracted an entomologist from a crown science company to provide its technical comments to MAF.

The Government's final version of the new import strategy was delivered to the industry on May 16, with amendments to a systems manual arriving on May 24.

"Almost at the same time we were providing our scientist's latest report to MAF, we were advised by email that the new system had been approved," Mr Ivicevich said.

The industry had outstanding issues with the New Zealand standard for fruitfly host material, that it wanted the Australian system to be tied to -- but MAF had not officially declared what the standard was.

Growers were also concerned about the system's ability to correctly monitor one of the chemical treatments of the imported tomatoes, and the industry had not been told of the independent audit of the procedures which had been promised by MAF officials before the system was approved.

Until this week, imports of tomatoes from Australia were restricted to five varieties from Queensland. The imports were also limited to a period in winter when it was not possible to grow field tomatoes in New Zealand -- also an important issue for New Zealand growers concerned about economic viability of their crops.

The tomatoes were disinfected before export by flood-spraying Dimethoate, an organophosphate insecticide. Only hard, green, unripe tomatoes were imported to reduce the danger of fruitfly.

Mr Ivess said he was "more than satisfied" that the treatment system approach advocated by the Australians met all MAF's requirements for preventing the establishment of Queensland fruitfly.

- NZPA