New Zealand-Farmers furious over imported pork.

The pork industry could soon be the latest casualty of the ugly side of the free trade stance our governments like to skite about.

New Zealand stands to gain millions, even billions, in extra income from these agreements. And not before time.

It is 20 years since we withdrew protection to our industries and began lowering import barriers. Many were badly hurt - the clothing industry is a shadow of its former self - and it is time to reap the rewards.

But the sacrifices are still being made and the pork industry thinks it is being offered up as the next victim.

That’s because the Agriculture and Forestry Ministry wants to change the rules around imported pork. That shouldn’t be a big problem. We can’t meet the demand for cured meat and we have to import 42 per cent of all the pork we eat.

But the local industry says the suggested rule changes, particularly allowing fresh pork imports, will open the door to a devastating disease. This is porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome, known as PRRS, pronounced "pers". It has cut a swath through piggeries in every country except Australia and New Zealand, killing up to 70 per cent of piglets. It is often referred to as the Aids of pigs, though it does not harm humans.

The industry’s science advisers, including world foot and mouth disease expert Roger Morris, say PRRS is bound to enter New Zealand if fresh cuts are imported. They give it three to five years. The ministry rejects this. The only way PRRS can get into the pig population is if infected meat is fed to our pigs.

That won’t happen in the 250 commercial piggeries but there are an unknown number of pigs being housed in backyards - estimates are of between 10,000 and 15,000 of these operations.

The industry’s scenario is that the imported meat will undercut the local product and will become a staple of cheap restaurants and fast- food outlets whose food scraps may be used by the backyard pig raisers.

The ministry intends to prevent this by restricting sales to 3kg packets of meat without lymph nodes. But why run this risk? Why not just keep the ban on fresh meat imports in place?

Because of our holier-than-thou attitude to free trade, the pork industry leaders say. They say senior trade policy makers have told them we can’t be seen to be using arguable biosecurity fears to block imports. It will just give other countries an excuse to do the same.

The trouble is, they already are. A classic case is the Australian apple import ban, now before the World Trade Organisation. No matter how strongly our science experts argue that our apples won’t introduce disease, the Aussies refuse to budge.

One of our arguments before the WTO is that we wouldn’t sink so low.

So, and it may be drawing a long bow, are we putting the $700 million pork industry at risk to gain a $30 million apple market?

The irony in this is that most of the fresh pork will come from European countries that don’t really care about the New Zealand market.

It is the much bigger, and also closed, Australian market that they are after, and they see New Zealand capitulation as opening a chink in the Aussie armour. I suppose that winning the apple case would be another blow. Such is the nefarious world of trade negotiation.

It appears one of the few legitimate ploys we have to protect our local producers is to require the country of origin to be stated on the food label, leaving it up to the shopper to choose to be patriotic. But, strangely, New Zealand has been reluctant to take this step. Cost appears to be a big factor, but even here some purists are saying it is over-protectionist. Australia has introduced country-of-origin labelling.

The pork industry’s only hope is that the Government will over-rule the ministry. NZPork has asked for a review of the science and Agriculture Minister David Carter is staying out of the argument till then.

The industry says if the ministry is allowed to apply the new rules, the next step will be to allow meat from countries with such economically disastrous diseases as bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), scrapie and foot and mouth.

How far are we prepared to go to maintain our high-minded trade-at- all-costs stand?