50-year import ban on Australian honey lifted

Beekeepers fear imports will threaten their viability. Picture / Chris Skelton

Australian honey is to be allowed into New Zealand, breaking a ban of more than half a century.

Honey from Western Australia - which does not have European foulbrood disease in its bees - will be allowed to enter the country without treatment. Other Australian honey will have to be treated with heat and some other bee products may be treated with radiation.

Heat treatment manages the risk of European foulbrood disease and nosema ceranae, a microsporidium pest. Inspection, heat treatment or testing would be used to manage the risk of American foulbrood and irradiation could be used for American foulbrood, European foulbrood and nosema pests in products other than honey.

Bulk honey from states with small hive beetle would also be heat treated.

The National Beekeepers' Association (NBA) has previously warned that cheap imported honey will threaten the viability of beekeeping and pollinating export crops and pastures.

Honey imports have been banned for decades, except for small quantities from some Pacific islands.

But the industry is still reeling from the arrival of the varroa mite six years ago - probably imported by a beekeeper smuggling a queen bee into the country for breeding.

Since 2000, the North Island has lost nearly 2000 beekeepers, 3000 apiaries and nearly 30,000 hives.

And now varroa mites have established a foothold in the South Island.

"Further decline will result from the importation of honey," NBA president Jane Lorimer predicted.

Her organisation disagrees with Biosecurity NZ's view that honey from Australia - potentially a major trade rival - can be safely imported if it is heat-treated.

"The NBA is concerned not only for the viability of beekeeping but also for the flow-on effects following the decrease of hive numbers and the exit of beekeepers from the industry as the economics of beekeeping decline," she said before yesterday's announcement.

The horticulture and agriculture sectors might not be able to pay for the pollination fees that beekeepers would have to charge to remain economically viable, she said.

Australian beekeepers and politicians said the earlier ban on Australian honey was unjustified.

However, Australian politicians have suggested that if they accepted New Zealand constraints on honey, New Zealand should accept Australia's decision to ban Kiwi apples because of fireblight disease.

Some apiarists belonging to the Bee Industry Group said beekeepers needed to face up to greater domestic competition, and that if risk analysis concluded Australian bee products were safe, then the industry would accept it.

But Hawke's Bay beekeeper Peter Berry said in 2002 - when he was chairman of the exotic disease committee of the National Beekeepers' Association - that heat treatment would not keep out European foulbrood disease.

In the first year of a European foulbrood outbreak there would be few or no hives available to pollinate kiwifruit and apples, and it might take three years to recover.

Biosecurity NZ's pre-clearance director Debbie Pearson said heat treatment giving a million-fold reduction in bacteria would be sufficient.

And because Western Australia was free of European foulbrood and nosema ceranae "untreated bee products can be imported from that state".


NEW IMPORTS

* Beeswax

* Honey

* Pollen

* Raw propolis

* Royal jelly


- NZPA