STOP MAI |
Authorised
by the STOP-MAI Campaign Coalition (WA) Affiliated
with the Australian Fair Trade and Investment Network
(AFTInet) |
| STOP MAI |
Authorised
by the STOP-MAI Campaign Coalition (WA) Affiliated
with the Australian Fair Trade and Investment Network
(AFTInet) |
Australia must support Tasmania's 'line in the sand' on salmon imports from non-disease-free WTO countries
In a few days, a Senate committee will report on the successful pressure by Canada and other members of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) to abolish Australia's 24-year ban on imports of uncooked salmon. It is high time for some democratic discussion of this.
The ban was dropped 8 months ago when political directions caused the Australian Quarantine Authority (AQIS) to relax the policy which protected our environment and salmon industry from introduction of northern-hemisphere fish diseases.
The Tasmanian Parliament has rocked the WTO's boat by refusing to allow that State's disease-free salmon fishery and aquiculture to be compromised by the alarming prospect of new diseases coming in from Canada and elsewhere. This precautionary and correct view will be shared by the vast majority of Australian citizens.
The problem is that the bureaucrats of Foreign Affairs and Trade have negotiated Australia into a corner in their haste to create "free market" access for exports. Their lack of due consideration to health and environment factors is likely to result in a major wave of protest by consumers -- as well as payments of compensation to foreign countries whose market access is justifiably restricted by precautionary actions such as Tasmania's.
On 22 November, a UK specialist in fish diseases, Mr David Bucke, warned the Senate Rural and Regional Affairs and Transport Committee (RRATC) that visual product inspections by Canadian exporters could not detect the presence of at least four or five serious diseases in multiple tissues of salmon for export to Australia.
Mr Bucke added that there were strict rules preventing the import of salmon and other fish to European Union countries, Britain and the US from any country known to have diseases which were not present in the importing country.
Australia's standards for an "appropriate level of protection" are not scientifically rigorous nor acceptable to community expectations. We can remedy the weakness only by going back to the WTO with an appeal which supports Tasmania's position.
ends #34
Detailed information is available at http://members.iinet.net.au/~jenks/salmon4.html
PHONE CONTACTS: Brian Jenkins +61 8 9528 1864; Dion Giles 0411 745 538