European farming cooperatives union Copa-Cogeca has urged the EU Commission to put in place safety measures to protect against potentially contaminated imports of citrus fruit coming from South Africa.
The call comes after the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) warned that there was a high risk of importing the highly contagious disease Black Spot – found in citrus from South Africa – which currently does not exist in the EU.
'The EU citrus fruit sector is crucial both from an economic and social point of view,' said Copa-Cogeca secretary general Pekka Pesonen, speaking in Brussels this week. 'It provides high quality, nutritious produce for 500m EU consumers as well as ensuring employment for millions of people in EU rural areas, both upstream and downstream, especially in southern countries.
'We cannot take the risk of importing the disease,' he continued. 'The impact would be disastrous for EU citrus fruit producers, particularly as southern countries are already being badly hit by a severe economic crisis.
'The EU Commission has already told the South African authorities to put in place measures to prevent the spread of the disease to Europe, after EFSA warned of the high risk of contamination,' Pesonen added. 'I therefore call on the EU Commission to establish immediately the necessary measures to prevent the spread of the disease to Europe and to restrict imports until the disease has been eradicated. We cannot wait until the next impact assessmemt to take action – we need to protect the EU sector against the introduction of Black Spot disease as no control measures currently exist.'
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