New Zealand-New import laws.

NEW ZEALAND-MAF

Biosecurity New Zealand’s (Biosecurity NZ) decision to make changes to the pH level, definition of cuts and the provision of consumer ready cuts on imported pig meat, pig meat products and by-products from Canada, the European Union, Mexico and the USA, has elicited an acidic response from the pork

industry.

Provisions on imported pig meat are designed to prevent the importation of Porcine Reproductive and Respiratory Syndrome (PRRS). Biosecurity NZ’s provisional changes to the import health standards would see these provisions loosened somewhat.

New Zealand and Australia are currently free of this disease, said to be the number one enemy disease of the pork industry worldwide. The import of live pigs and pig semen is strictly controlled in this country, however it would be possible for New Zealand pigs to get the disease if they ate scraps of raw imported pig meat infected with PRRS.

PRRS does not affect humans, however it causes sows to abort and piglets to die slow and agonising deaths. It can kill 70 per cent of piglets and more at weaning.

Biosecurity NZ’s provisional Import Health Standards would see the lower end of the pH treatment range for cured pig meat change from five or lower to six or lower – Biosecurity NZ states infectivity is rapidly lost when the pH level is six or lower.

The provisional decision also revises Biosecurity NZ’s definition of "cuts".

Biosecurity NZ said the new definition was internationally verifiable, certifiable and limited to consumer-ready cuts, all of which must be ready for direct retail sale, with all major lymph nodes removed, and be sold in packages that cannot exceed 3kg.

"Having considered the public submissions, all relevant science and a wide range of expert opinion, MAF considers the PRRS risk associated with consumer-ready pork imports to be effectively managed by the measures proposed in the Import Health Standards," said Barry O’Neil deputy director general of Biosecurity NZ.