Copa and Cogeca sent a letter to the EU Commission today calling for EU measures to be reinforced to prevent black spot disease in citrus fruit from entering Europe after 11 more cases of the highly contagious diseases were detected at borders in imports from South Africa and 10 from Argentina.
Copa- Cogeca Secretary-General Pekka Pesonen warned “It is just a question of time before black spot in citrus fruit comes into the EU unless the EU Commission takes tough action and puts in place real measures to prevent the spread of the contagious disease. Already, 11 cases were detected at the borders in citrus fruit imports from South Africa by September this year. This far exceeds the EU Commissions permissible limit of 5 as set out in EC Decision 2014/422. Last year 25 cases were intercepted and 35 cases in 2013. There were also 10 cases detected this year at the borders in citrus fruit imports from Argentina. This is unacceptable. The situation is unsustainable. Measures currently in place are not sufficient”.
He continued “The Commission already stated in its animal and plant health strategy that "prevention is better than cure", yet in the light of the current situation, not enough is being done to ensure that this criteria is met. If the disease enters the EU, it will be the producers who pay the price. There will not be any phytosanitary products to combat the disease. Foreign markets will be lost and many farmers will have to leave the sector. This puts at stake 500,000 ha and 11,000,000 tonnes of produce as well as thousands of jobs in the EU. . For all these reasons, Copa and Cogeca would like to ask the European Commission to revise current EU rules and adopt decisive measures such as automatically banning imports of citrus fruit from areas contaminated with Guignardia citricarpa after the sixth case has been intercepted and closely monitor imports from Argentina. This would prevent the disease from entering the EU”.
He went on to explain that black Spot is a disease that is not present in Europe and its presence could have disastrous consequences on the citrus sector in producer countries. The EU citrus fruit sector is crucial both from an economic and social point of view. It provides the EU with high quality produce, at the same time 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. The impact would be catastrophic for EU citrus fruit producers”, he said
Finally he underlined: “We only are asking to put in place the recommendations made by the European Food Safety Authority EFSA saying that the Commission should not underestimate the high risk of black spot disease in citrus fruit spreading and contaminating European groves via imports from South Africa
