Call for rigour and expanded biosecurity review

The Federation’s vice president, William Rolleston, says he’d also like to see the review extend to all pollen imports “because Federated Farmers doesn’t want any door left ajar.

“Only 13 months ago, the old MAF was so confident in the import health standard for pollen, that it said there was no peer-reviewed scientific evidence pollen was a pathway for bacteria. Even to a layman, it doesn’t seem plausible pollen could transmit viruses and fungi but not bacteria,” notes Rolleston.

He says he’s concerned a 2007 paper, ‘Plant pathogens transmitted by pollen’, may have unduly influenced MAF policy.

“This paper concluded that while certain viruses and fungi could be transmitted by pollen, ‘there are no…bacteria…that are pollen transmitted’.”

Rolleston, a medical scientist as well as farm business owner, says an absence of evidence should be treated differently by decision makers to evidence of absence.

“Categorical negatives are difficult to prove in science and should be treated with some suspicion.

“Having said that, this aspect of the import health standard also slipped past industry scrutiny.

“These are also big lessons to be learnt as MAF Biosecurity ponders the risk of PRRS in imported raw pork, not to mention bee diseases not present in New Zealand but carried in honey overseas, such as European Foulbrood and the Israeli Acute Paralysis Virus.”