Fruit Fly Got through Border Cracks, Are We up to Speed Now?
Fruit Fly Got through Border Cracks, Are We up to Speed Now?
New Zealand First wants the Prime Minister to reassure growers that action has been ramped up against the spread of the Queensland fruit fly.
“The job was not done properly at the border and now we have a second and third find in Auckland, including a female and dozens of larvae,’’ says Primary Industries and Biosecurity Spokesperson Richard Prosser.
“With our exports at risk we want reassurance from the government that the job will be done properly now.
“Honesty box biosecurity and an over reliance on technology means this is the fourth incursion since May 2012, when there hadn’t been a Queensland fruit fly detection for the previous 16 years.
“Defence of our food crops should be ranked as highly as our military efforts. A loss of markets stares us in the face if the fruit fly takes hold.
“We’ve been saying for years that this government’s cost-cutting approach to biosecurity would come back to bite the country.
“We need more people, sniffer dogs, fumigation and x-ray inspections at the border , computer models and glossy think-tank reports.
“New Zealand has been subject to an ever-increasing flood of imported goods and people, from ever more questionable points of origin and with ever less stringent scrutiny.
“This incursion is a huge warning to pile resources into more border checks. It has always been patently obvious that their ‘Look Mum, no hands’ approach was never going to work.
“Open import, free-market ideology could be the ruination of our export produce unless we match it with protection.
“Finally we hear that all incoming international airline baggage is to be x-rayed. It is obviously too little and too late. Please can we start properly inspecting hand luggage and shipping containers as well, before we get foot and mouth disease?”
ENDS