Neighbours expose biosecurity scandal

By SIMON COLLINS science reporter

A year's persistent detective work by two South Auckland women has forced the Government to admit breaching its own biosecurity regulations last year.

Mangatawhiri farmer Jane Holmes and her neighbour, fabric sales representative Lynnette Baird, used personal observation, contacts, the Official Information Act and the internet to uncover 22 breaches of regulations when Australian barley was stored in silos by their homes.

At one stage, Mrs Holmes and her husband, Mark, visited the Auckland wharves at night to see an official just watching as the barley was unloaded from the Panama-registered Ken Sho to be taken to the Mangatawhiri silo.

They obtained official documents that showed the barley contained 19 weeds regarded as noxious in various parts of Australia, the United States, Canada and Europe.

The weeds could have badly damaged farms if they had escaped, but they were not listed as dangerous by the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry, whose list of prohibited weeds had not been updated for nine years.

A year later, the ministry has completed a full audit and confirmed that it breached its own rules on at least six counts and may have broken the law when it approved storing the imported barley at Mangatawhiri.

It has promised to issue a completely revised grain importing standard, including an updated list of prohibited weeds, on September 16.

The acting general manager of the ministry Quarantine Service, Fergus Small, said the official who approved storing imported barley at Mangatawhiri had been told he could not approve any more stores for imported grain in rural areas.

Imported grain is supposed to be stored in urban areas where it cannot infect crops. The only exception is class 1 grain, which is considered to be free of dangerous weeds.

The barley was imported by Australian grain merchants Jossco as class 2 but was upgraded to class 1 three months after it arrived here, boosting its selling price as an animal food mainly for pig breeders.

A Waikato grain farmer, Ian Gavin, said the ministry's failure to enforce the law "opened the country up to some pretty horrible exposure".

"It was opening ourselves up for some of the nasty weeds from Australia, and I also think it was a case of companies involved being able to exploit an opportunity that should just not have been there to buy class 2 grain and sell it as class 1.

"There was huge money to be made, and it should just never have happened."

A Timaru farmer who chaired Federated Farmers' Grains Council at the time, Neil Barton, said he had concerns about imports even of class 1 grain "if their testing procedures are as lax as they appeared to be in that shipment".

"They are reviewing their importing procedures and putting more resources into this area, not only because of the biosecurity concerns but also because of the situation as far as genetically modified organisms is concerned."

He said the ministry's audit had "completely vindicated" the months of work Mrs Holmes and Mrs Baird put into their investigation.

nzherald.co.nz/environment