Research supports disease transmission fear
A SCIENTIFIC study commissioned by Apple and Pear Australia Ltd (APAL) could be the key to a successful appeal against a WTO ruling that Australia must allow imports of apples from fire blight-affected countries, Donnybrook fruit growers heard last week.
APAL representatives held a meeting to keep growers informed about the Australian government’s appeal against the WTO’s recent ruling canning Australian import restrictions.
APAL general manager Tony Russell said APAL-sponsored work had been presented at an international fire blight conference in Poland two weeks ago.
It showed fire blight bacteria could be transmitted via medfly from artificially innoculated pear shoots to foliage.
Bees were also known to be a contributing factor in fire blight transmission, Mr Russell said.
“We funded this work to try to establish this pathway.
“The work hadn’t been done in the world of science, but we’ve still got a major battle on our hands — it has to be published and peer reviewed before it can be introduced into evidence,” he said.
APAL chairman Darral Ashton said fire blight was present in 49 countries. Authorities know how it got into nine of those countries, but not into the other 40.
Australian import restrictions are designed to keep out fire blight, apple canker and apple leaf-curling midge.
The WTO’s stance was that Australia had over-reacted on the issue and existing WTO protocols for bio-security were adequate, Mr Ashton said.
The best avenue for growers now was to go ahead with the appeal. Both sides of politics have agreed to pursue the issue once the results of the election are known.
“The government expects the app-eal to be finalised by the end of the year,” he said.
“If the appeal is dismissed, it would have to be reworked, which could take up to another year.”
The appeal looks at every stage in the supply chain and assesses the potential risk of transmission of fireblight.
The WTO previously found against Australia on eight of the 12 stages, and in favour on four.
“It’s up to the appeal body to regain ground in the areas where the risk is not adequately assessed,” Mr Ashton said. “The WTO put more weight on the arguments from the New Zealand side, so we need to balance things out to regain ground. If there’s no change, we’ll do the risk assessment again.”
Mr Russell said it was not clear what input growers had in the process because it was new territory for the industry.
Mr Ashton said the issue was no longer just about apples and pears, but about Australia’s whole quarantine system.
“The protocols are to protect Australia from pests and diseases we don’t have,” he said.
“If that makes it prohibitive to export apples here, that’s not our problem.”
Mr Russell said quarantine was the prime and only area where growers could press the government to get it right. Other issues such as competition and economics carried no weight.
“We knew 2010 would be a challenging year for the apple industry,” he said.
Fire blight could affect a number of other plants, including ornamentals, which would potentially devastate the nursery industry as well as orchards, Mr Russell said.
Kirup orchardist and Fruitwest chairman Ben Darbyshire said it was difficult for the fruit industry to capture public and political attention when agriculture represented only 2.6 per cent of the Australian GDP.
“Such a small amount relative to the Australian economy indicates why we’re not heard, but we should be because food security is important,” he said.
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