British Ministry puts ban on N.Z. plants

Press, 25 November 1982, Page 17

British Ministry puts ban on N.Z. plants

NZPA staff correspondent London Sales of New Zealand plants to Britain have been badly hit by a British Ministry of Agriculture ban on camellias and other plants because a fungus called glomerella has been found on them. The Ministry has destroyed lots of infected camellias and has banned the sale of noninfected plants by nurseries which have brought them from New Zealand exporters.

The plants are being held in the: nurseries until the next northern summer.

“Not being able to sell them is comercially disastrous," the agriculture counsellor at the New Zealand High Commission, Mr John Jackman, told NZPA. Glomerella is widespread in New Zealand, particularly in Auckland, but caused insignificent damage, he said. It is also found in Britain and other countries.

However, a British Ministry of Agriculture spokeswoman said that the glomerella found on the New Zealand plants was a severe strain.

“We are treating it as a

non-indigenous disease in an attempt to eradicate it,” she said.

“We are attempting to find a solution which will enable us to protect our own produce and enable trade to continue.” New Zealand scientists have examined the plants and tests have been conducted in New Zealand. “The British have looked at their own evidence and say it is a virulent strain,” Mr Jackman said. “We have evidence that it causes damage, blit there is wider evidence that it is not likely to be a virulent strain. If it was we would expect it to be causing damage to camellias in New Zealand, which it is not. “It is curious that New Zealand camellia exports to other world markets have had none of these problems. “We contend it is of minimum quarantine significance to establish camellias in Britain or anywhere else.”

There was now a “sort of scientific stand-off’ between Britain and New Zealand over the plants, Mr Jackman said.

Apart from camellias, the British ban also extends to

other plants including magnolia, photinia, and pieris. The Ministry of Agriculture said that shipments can be resumed next year if satisfactory control measures are taken in New Zealand. “However, it would be commercially very difficult unless the 1982 plants are cleared by British Ministry of Agriculttire,” Mr Jackman said.

The sales manager of Newington Nurseries in Surrey, Mrs Felicia Stevens, and a pioneer importer of New Zealand plants, told NZPA: “It is a damned nuisance. On one side we have New Zealand saying glomerella is not a problem and on the other side the Ministry of Agriculture saying it is. We are left in the middle.

“We will not be buying any more from New Zealand in the meantime until it has been resolved.

“If it is virulent we are all for precautions being taken; however, if it is not, we would like to know why they are messing us about,” she said.

New Zealand’s plant trade with Britain has been growing, and there are hopes it

will soon be worth more than ?NZ2.3 million a year. The International Plant Protection Convention leaves importing countries to decide what plants are of “quarantine significance” and there is no appeal against this decision. Under British Government regulations, drawn up in 1980 after an E.E.C. directive, the New Zealand Government is licensed to export certain plants to Britain and importing nurseries are licensed to buy them. There was no problem with imports from New Zealand until last season when the Ministry of Agriculture ordered the destruction of acer (Canadian maple) plants because they had not been fumigated before they left New Zealand.

New Zealand exporters had to.- pay compensation to British importers for their loss.

"They had been sending the same plants for years without any fumigation requirement and they were perfectly healthy,” Mr Jackman said. British officials howevr said that exporters had not observed the terms of their licence.