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Bans on foreign foods to be lifted
20 Feb 2004
Biosecurity Australia issued three rulings yesterday which overturn import bans that have been in place for decades. The rulings will remove barriers to imports of cooked pork, and open Australia's markets to bananas from the Philippines and New Zealand apples. Only the pork ruling is final at this stage, and Biosecurity Australia will only allow imports of all three products if certain conditions are met.
Australian Banana Growers' Council chairman Len Collins said the ruling was "outrageous", putting Australia's $350 million-a-year banana industry at risk from imported contagious diseases. Mr Collins said the Philippines has the world's worst banana diseases and no culture of quarantine control.
Australian Pork Ltd's chairman Paul Higgins said CSIRO has estimated that there's a 95 per cent chance that Australia's pig herds will be infected with an exotic disease within 10 years.
The Australian apple industry has been fighting since 2000 to overturn an earlier ruling allowing NZ apples to be sold here for the first time since the 1920s.
The Age, 20/2/04.
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