South Africa accumulates 17 pest detections in citrus shipments to Europe
The Valencian Association of Farmers (AVA-ASAJA) warns that European ports of entry intercepted six shipments of citrus fruits from South Africa infested with pests and diseases during last September. According to the official data of the European Commission, published in Europhyt, these new positives raise to a total of 17 South African shipments intercepted throughout this citrus campaign and when the country still has several months left to close its imports bound for Europe.
The concern of the community citrus sector responds not only to the high number of detections but also to the severity of the pests found in these shipments. Thus, among the last cases there are five contaminated with Thaumatotibia leucotreta or ‘false moth’, while there is another shipment infested with CBS or black citrus stain. In total, since July South Africa counts twelve detections of false moth and five of black spot.
For the president of AVA-ASAJA, Cristóbal Aguado, “these are two pests and quarantine diseases that pose a very serious risk for European citrus, since if they were to be introduced and spread through our orange trees, farmers would not have enough active materials effective to fight them and they would cause millionaire losses ”.
The European Commission notifies in that same publication that there are five shipments of South African citrus fruits that do not contain all the documentation required by Community legislation and may even lack the corresponding phytosanitary passport.
It also happens that a country adjacent to South Africa such as Zimbabwe records two more detections of ‘false moths’ in its citrus containers. As for the countries that are part of the Mercosur alliance – which has just signed a trade agreement with the EU for which it will liberalize agrifood imports – it is worth noting the large number of interceptions in Argentina and Uruguay. The first accumulates eleven cases: nine of them with black spot and two of Xanthomonas citri or citrus cancer. For their part, customs inspectors identified three shipments of Uruguayan citrus fruit with the presence of black spot and one with citrus cancer.
Aguado denounces “the silence and complicit passivity that Brussels is granting to third countries that are not able to guarantee a minimum health security for citrus fruits that they send to the EU. Faced with such blatant cases as South Africa, Argentina or Uruguay, we must act in a blunt manner and close the doors until they guarantee that their citrus fruits are free of pests. Likewise, the EU should make it very clear to them what measures they must comply with in phytosanitary matters: for example, to determine the cold treatment system that the citrus cargoes of South Africa have to assume and not to continue choosing the country of origin or the importing company in question as it happens now. We are playing with fire and it is time for European rulers, who collect our taxes, to prove that they defend our interests. ”
