Brussels, 07/10/2015 (Agence Europe) - Copa and Cogeca, the organisation representing agricultural cooperatives in the European Union are calling for EU measures to be stepped up to prevent the entry into Europe of black spot disease that affects citrus fruit.
Eleven cases of the disease have been detected at EU borders in imports from South Africa and ten from Argentina.
“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”, stated Copa-Cogeca Secretary General Pekka Pesonen in a letter to the European Commission on Tuesday 6 October. He went on: “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, he pointed out.
Pesonen went to say that, 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 hectares and 11,000,000 tonnes of produce as well as thousands of jobs in the EU”, he argued. That is why Copa and Cogeca 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 black spot disease after the sixth case has been intercepted and closely monitor imports from Argentina. “We cannot take the risk of importing the disease. The impact would be catastrophic for EU citrus fruit producers”, he said. (Original version in French by Lionel Changeur)