Fruit growers take MPI to court

MPI has ordered up to 48,000 apple and stonefruit trees to be destroyed or contained after concerns about the importation of material from the CPCNW (Clean Plan Centre Norwest) facility in the US. 

Five New Zealand industry members were heading to court for a judicial review of the decision as Rural News went to press. 

The orchardists taking the legal action claimed MPI’s action was based mainly on missing paperwork from the US facility and that MPI had been tardy in its own audits of the facility.

Bill Howell, a US plant virologist and former manager of CPCNW for more than 20 years, says given the situation MPI’s reaction action “appears to be significantly beyond reasonable measures”.

Howell says he cannot determine where the fault lies “however, the draconian reaction of MPI seems heavy-handed and inappropriate”. 

He has seen responses in the US to actual fruit tree disease outbreaks and occasionally for smuggled material, but not due to missing records. 

“There is always risk when importing biological material. However, despite apparent paperwork missteps, CPCNW is still the safest route through which to import pome (apples, pears, nashi and quince) and stone fruit varieties.  

“All items are extensively assayed for virus and virus-like diseases in the programme before material is released or exported. Further, most of the virus diseases are assayed using two or more testing protocols.”

Destruction of new and promising varieties will set the industry back as it works to maintain competitive advantage in the global fruit market, he says. 

“Despite the apparent lapse in some CPCNW test records, it remains the premier facility to source new virus-tested cultivars of pome and stone fruit. Risk is minimised by obtaining propagation material from this programme, which tests for all know virus and virus-like pathogens of these crops.”  

He says many viruses of pome and stone fruit trees are universally found and they produce little disease. 

But others, of limited geographic distribution, have significant economic effects. Rapid tests for these exotic viruses are available. 

“Has MPI considered testing to confirm the virus status as indicated by CPCNW?” he asks.

Lynnell Brandt, who a owns a number of US nursery companies and heads the Associated International Group of Nurseries, says when contemplating action some credence must be given to the actual risk exposure to the industry.

“The entire rationale for having a quarantine protocol must be related to the actual risk and how it is mitigated. If the risk of exposure is non-existent or minimal, this needs to have an impact on any contemplated actions,” he says.

Brandt is not aware of any similar actions by other countries related to the CPCNW facility.  

“This institute has been active for many decades and has assisted the greater industry in the US and elsewhere significantly.”

Brandt says to eliminate all risk you could stop all importation of any plants. This would deny the industry  access to other new products invented outside NZ. If there were no entry path, individuals would then resort to smuggling with no management of plant health. 

“The other extreme is to have no protocols for entry into the country and everything is allowed in. This would of course put the industry at risk from an exotic decease that could decimate the industry. The answer is somewhere in between, where there is screening in a realistic way that provides protection but also allows the industry to be competitive in the global market.”

For plants here for several years, symptoms would now be seen on either foliage or fruit. Most common viruses of these trees are already spread worldwide and have existed in NZ for years.

He says any approach needs to be based on common sense given the track record of where the material is coming from.

“CPCNW’s history of working the NZ industry has existed since at the least the 1980s when CPCNW developed most of the protocols for detecting viruses and virus like entities. 

“CPCNW is still one of the leading programmes in the world and is actively working to improve methodology to provide clean material. CPCNW supplies much of the material for many countries.”