MPI open to some ‘modest’ grower claims
WELLINGTON: The Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI), facing compensation claims for more than $1 billion of taxpayer dollars around various biosecurity issues, has added the apple and stonefruit sector to its list of potential claimants.
MPI, in a written statement issued minutes after extended High Court interim orders expired around a legal challenge by fruit growers to the ministry’s destruction/containment order for 48,000 apple and stonefruit plants, said it was ‘‘open to receiving modest reimbursement claims for some direct and verifiable losses incurred as a result of destroyed or contained plant material’’.
The Government, through MPI, is already subject to up to $800 million of projected claims from dairy and beef cattle farmers for compensation under the Biosecurity Act for losses incurred by its containment and mass kill response to a Mycoplasma bovis cattle disease incursion, while Stewart Island oyster farmers await major compensation for an MPI mass destruction order and other MPI biosecurity decisions are legally challenged by industry groups.
It is understood MPI has at least 15 biosecurity challenges on its plate right now.
The latest claim on taxpayer money from biosecurity issues started when MPI issued a directive to 32 apple and stonefruit industry participants in Hawke’s Bay, Waikato, Nelson and Central Otago to destroy or contain 48,000 plants imported from a longtime Washington State Universitybased quarantine facility provider to the New Zea land fruitgrowing industry.
A group representing apple and stonefruit growers and other fruit industry participants challenged the directive last month, seeking a High Court judicial review.
The group claimed the directive would cost the industry up to $500 million in lost income and would set its innovation progress back by 15 years.
Meanwhile, it said, plants and plant material were dying because they could not be planted or used, and many plants had been destroyed.
The High Court found the legal route taken by MPI to make the containment/destruction order was unlawful.
But it noted the thoroughness of MPI’s investigations.
The court recommended the parties negotiate a solution — a finding which MPI sought an extension for, and which has now expired.
An MPI statement issued minutes after the deadline said the ministry remained concerned at the potential biosecurity risk associated with the imported plant material.
‘‘We’ve now issued new notices under a different section of the Biosecurity Act so we can continue to manage potential risk through containment and a spraying and netting programme while we work through a testing plan with each owner,’’ the statement said.
‘‘If no pests or diseases of concern are found then the plant material will be able to be released in the future.
‘‘MPI remains open to receiving modest reimbursement claims for some direct and verifiable losses incurred as a result of destroyed or contained plant material.’’ — NZME
❛ MPI remains open to
receiving modest reimbursement claims for some direct and verifiable losses incurred as a result of destroyed or contained plant material