Canada bans N.Z. wine

Press, 19 August 1985, Page 12

Canada bans N.Z. wine

PA Wellington Canadian authorities have banned the sale of a New Zealand wine found to contain a pesticide forbidden in Canada, official sources say. The news agency AFP reported from Toronto that Liquor Control Board of Ontario tests had turned up traces of mesurol in Corban’s Sylvaner riesling, the only New Zealand wine sold in Ontario.

The amounts of mesurol, a pesticide used in vineyards to discourage birds from pecking at the grapes, did not represent a serious health danger, but the presence of the banned chemical led to its prohibition, AFP reported. However, in Wellington, a Health Department spokesman, Mr Garry McAulay, said that the amount of mesurol in the wine was well within New Zealand safety standards. According to New Zea-

land regulations for export, the standard allowed is 3 parts per million of mesurol in wine.

“We understand that the Corban’s wine was tested at 0.46 p.p.m. in Canada. But Canada, unlike New Zealand, Australia and the United States, has no standard of its own,” Mr McAulay told NZPA. “It means that if they have no level they set one at 0.1 ppm. It’s just a figure pulled out of the air. “We sign certificates saying our wine is O.K. with a tolerance of 3 ppm. “So it is really a Canadian problem. We are well within our standards,” he said.

Recently, several brands of Austrian and German wine were found to contain an anti-freeze additive which had been used to sweeten them artificially and increase their alcoholic content.