South Africa’s ongoing interventions to stop Citrus Black Spot (CBS) are paying off with no interceptions yet reported for this season’s exports.
The citrus industry has been working for years to minimise the interceptions of affected fruit into Europe, meeting the stringent requirements that have been put in place by the European Union.
This even though scientific research has proved that CBS fruit from South Africa cannot infect European crops.
And it has come at a significant cost.
“The CBS Risk Management System does impact heavily on EU returns as it costs growers R1 billion per annum to adhere to these unnecessary measures,” Justin Chadwick, CEO of the Citrus Growers’ Association (CGA) told FTW.
Last year there were five CBS interceptions, said Lucien Jansen, CEO of the Perishables Products Export Control Board (PPECB).
“The South African fruit industry is well established and very mature. I am of the opinion that the industry is fairly resilient and has responded well to imposed measures,” he said.
And while there were five interceptions – two made in the last week of the season – this was a significant improvement on previous seasons.
While the current season has got off to a relatively good start with no CBS interceptions to date, the same can’t be said of False Codling Moth (FCM) where there have been five interceptions – all in France since the start of the 2017 season.
“We are aware of the FCM detections, but I am confident that the industry will do everything reasonably possible to comply with any recommendations made to mitigate the risk of further FCM occurrences,” said Jansen.
With the EU calling for mandatory cold steri treatment to be imposed on all citrus imports, it remains unclear what the impact of the five FCM interceptions will be.
The South African citrus industry has maintained that it is impractical and unnecessary for stringent cold steri treatments of all its produce.
According to Chadwick at present there is no mandatory cold sterilisation for fruit going to the EU and fruit going to this market during 2017 would not undergo any cold treatment.
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The CBS Risk Management System impacts heavily on EU returns as it costs growers R1 billion per annum to adhere to these unnecessary measures. – Justin Chadwick
