Sentence Satisfies Food Safety Authority

The farmer who pleaded guilty to using the plant pesticide endosulfan as a non-approved animal spray on cattle at his farm west of Auckland has been fined a total of $15,000 plus court costs.

His actions led to a suspension of New Zealand beef exports to Korea in September 2005. Beef exports to seven other markets were also potentially affected.

Mr Carl Houghton, of Waimauku, had earlier pleaded guilty to two charges under the Animal Products Act and one charge under the Agricultural Compounds and Veterinary Medicines Act. At Waitakere District Court on Friday, 27 July, he was subsequently fined $5000 for each offence, plus solicitors' fees and court costs.

In his summing up, his Honour Judge Moore told Mr Houghton: "Anyone with any understanding of the importance of the meat trade to New Zealand can only see in what happened here a disaster of national importance."

When handing down the fines the judge made it clear it was not a benchmark sentence but an "absolute minimum" given the current means of Mr Houghton, and highlighted the need for "a very, very clear message" to be sent to the farming community. He said he believed that there was "still a major problem in this country over farmers' attitudes towards agricultural chemicals", adding, in essence, that they needed to understand the significance and seriousness of the consequences of their actions. "It comes back to this if dealing with animals for slaughter, if you use something off-label, take veterinary advice before use, not after. Anything less is a totally inadequate response."

At an earlier court hearing Mr Houghton had admitted breaching regulated use of the product when he sprayed it on 10 of his cattle, and failing to notify the processing plant when he later presented the animals for slaughter.

Geoff Allen, NZFSA's Director (Compliance and Investigation) says: "We are satisfied with the outcome. The court has clearly realised the seriousness of the offence. The fine serves as a warning to others that actions will have consequences, and that all food safety regulations must be followed."

NZFSA was first alerted to the problem in September 2005 when Korean authorities detected low levels of endosulfan in excess of the international standard for meat fat (0.5ppm, compared with the accepted international level for meat fat of 0.1ppm) in a consignment of New Zealand beef.

Although levels of the residue were lower than those allowed on other foods, such as vegetables, and there were no human health issues, their presence in meat highlighted that good agricultural practice had not been followed.

NZFSA initiated an immediate investigation, which quickly isolated the Waimauku farm as the source. Although only 10 cattle were directly implicated, a large number of cartons sent to Korea, Taiwan and several other markets were identified as containing some type of product from these animals or others on the farm.

The Korean government initially suspended all imports of New Zealand beef. After extensive discussions with NZFSA's market access officials Korea later revised its suspension to holding and testing all product and, still later, to holding and testing only product from the Northland-based plant that had processed the affected beef.

The response, however, saw some Korean importers turn away from New Zealand as a supplier. Lucrative Korean military contracts, which normally accounted for around 35% of New Zealand's beef exports were lost.

"The activities of one farmer prompted one of the biggest and costliest NZFSA non-compliance investigations we have seen," says Geoff.

"NZFSA reminds all food producers that they need to follow the rules, which are there for good reason. Something that may seem harmless, or like a good idea at the farm level, could have a major impact on food exports which are worth about $30 billion a year to New Zealand and represent around half the nation's income."

While not extensively used in New Zealand, endosulfan is used in some horticultural applications and when used according to label is not considered in itself to present a health risk to consumers. However it is not approved for use on animals or for use on animal fodder.

Geoff adds: "Repercussions from the incident, in the form of additional testing measures, were still being felt by the New Zealand beef industry for several months after the incident."

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