Australia - Debate over pork import decision intensifies

The Senate's Rural Affairs Committee has written to the country's head of quarantine, urging him to reverse the decision to allow pig meat imports into Australia. The committee has been conducting an inquiry into Biosecurity Australia's decision to approve pig meat imports and was due to hand down its findings later this week. But yesterday the IRA appeals panel dismissed six objections to the decision, paving the way for a new quarantine policy. Committee chair Liberal Senator Bill Heffernan says members want the Director of Quarantine to invoke a precautionary clause, under world trade rules, to keep pig meat imports out. He says the risk of the disease PMWS is too great. "Australia is one of the few, four or five, countries in the world that doesn't actually have this disease; and we think that the science is incomplete, there is no real scientific answer as to how it spreads and what the agents are that allow it to spread. "In view of all that we, at the very least, should invoke the precautionary clause, which is available to Australia under the WTO, and do some more science work." But Biosecurity Australia says it will be harder for countries to import pig meat into Australia under the new quarantine policy. Animal Biosecurity general manager David Banks says the new policy is very tight, and any countries with cases of pork respiratory or wasting diseases will have to cook their meat prior to export.