Legal and technical teams have met with expert witnesses at a World Trade Organisation (WTO) meet in Geneva, Switzerland to discuss New Zealand's long-running apple access case against Australia.
The hearing followed Australia's decision earlier in the year to grant access to New Zealand apples after an eight-year risk analysis, only for New Zealand authorities to label the conditions required for entry as 'impossible', claiming that the risk analysis process had been heavily intertwined with political interference and alterations.
Peter Beaven, CEO of industry representative Pipfruit New Zealand, said that evidence given at the hearing 'largely confirmed' that in many cases Biosecurity Australia had selected risk levels that were not supported by science.
'For instance, in the case of European canker, one expert stated that rotting apples because of a canker infection are incapable of producing acospores that could be carried by the wind into trees, so there was no provable pathway for transfer' he told Fruitnet.com. 'In the case of fireblight, one expert claimed there was as much chance of a transfer of the disease via insects being blown across the Tasman Sea as there was on an apple.'
However, he explained that scientists could not completely rule out the possibility of disease transfer through apple shipments, leaving it down to the WTO panel to determine whether there is currently a sufficient relationship between the measures in Biosecurity Australia's risk analysis and real-time science for the current regulations to be justified.
The WTO panel is set to announce its decision in November, with either country then having 30 days to appeal, which could add a further 6-8 months to the final outcome.
'From a New Zealand perspective, we would rather have been able to negotiate a settlement with Australia to gain meaningful access, but because of the political interference in their risk analysis this has proved impossible,' Mr Beaven added. 'Therefore, it has been good to have an independent body look at the science in an objective way.'
