Industry farmers support NZ Pork legal challenge

New Zealand Pork’s fight against the Ministry for Primary Industries (formerly the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry) decision to relax import standards on pork imported from other countries is finding support from other meat industry sectors, the Marlborough Express reports.

Marlborough Federated Farmers will ask its national office and Beef and Lamb New Zealand to back NZ Pork’s legal challenge to the freeing up of fresh pork imports.

In May, New Zealand’s High Court upheld a decision by the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry (now Ministry for Primary Industries) to relax import standards for pig meat from countries with porcine reproductive and respiratory system (PRRS) virus.

Critics are saying that on the one hand New Zealand’s government has introduced the a National Animal Identification Scheme to improve NZ’s response to biosecurity calamities, and that this move on the part of the Ministry of Primary Industries is at odds with that scheme, the decision potentially leaving NZ open to PRRS or FMD.

The pork industry in NZ is unsubsidised and therefore has trouble competing with imports from countries where the pork industry does receive governmental support, and keeping to NZ’s stringent food safety guidelines.