• After taking Brussels to the WTO over the cold treatment approved against ‘false moth’, South African operators are demanding that their government take similar action over P. citricarpa and are now announcing that they are suspending the export of oranges to the EU from 15 September, but only from the provinces where the disease is declared.
• The interprofessional describes the measure as “cynical”: it is the seventh time in 11 years that they have taken a similar unilateral decision; it is an implicit recognition that their management of the pest is “insufficient” and only “aims to avoid a greater evil, which is that the Commission definitively vetoes their exports to Europe”. Hence the call now to do just that, to block South African imports.
• Intercitrus warns that South African exporters spread “lies and half-truths” and “try to sell as a responsible action” a suspension of orange exports that is only partial, that does not reduce the phytosanitary risk as it does not affect other citrus fruits (which also suffer from the fungus) and whose impact will be “minimal” as sales from the later and exempted areas will be maintained.

Intercitrus denounces the “umpteenth disinformation campaign” promoted by the Citrus Growers Association (CGA) of South Africa “with the intention of hiding the infection unleashed in the north and east of the country and the failure of its control systems against the ‘Black Spot’ (Citrus Black Spot, CBS or P. citricarpa). This is how the President of Interprofessional Citrus, Inmaculada Sanfeliu, reacts after learning of the announcement made on Monday by this organisation and by the Fresh Produce Exporters’ Forum (FPEF) – the company responsible for plant health in South African citrus – when they informed that orange exports to the EU will end early on the 15th September. Specifically, it will be from that date that the FPEF will stop inspecting and issuing certificates for shipments to Europe, but only for oranges from areas in the Eastern Cape, where the pest is supposedly officially declared. The measure will have a very limited effect and will hardly contribute to reducing the phytosanitary risk: it does not affect other citrus fruits that also suffer from the disease (mandarins, lemons or grapefruit); the bulk of the orange season is already finished in this South African province; the ships leaving from this date will serve to maintain the supply until the first days of October and from then on, or before, the supply of this citrus fruit could come from the provinces declared exempt which, not coincidentally, are also the latest ones (Western Cape and Northern Cape).

As mentioned above, this is not the first time that the CGA has taken a similar unilateral decision. In the last eleven years it has done so on seven occasions: in 2013 it ordered the suspension on 18 September, thus anticipating the blockade that the European Commission (EC) was forced to order in November – when the campaign had concluded – and in that year it accumulated up to 36 interceptions for CBS; in 2014 the same situation occurred, also with a significant number of rejections due to this fungus (28), anticipating the measures to strengthen controls that Brussels would adopt later; Something similar was repeated in 2015 (with 15 rejections) when the CGA suspended inspections from 17 September and also ordered its operators to avoid Spanish ports after questioning the way in which the Ministry of Agriculture officials carried out the inspections; In 2017 it was applied in October (and accumulated 24 rejections by CBS); in 2018 the same was ordered from 22 September despite suffering ‘only’ two interceptions and in 2022 the suspension, as a novelty, was organised in a staggered manner between 16 and 22 September (with 28 rejections in the whole campaign). This year and up to August, without counting the months that with or without a ‘partial’ suspension will be the most commercially intense (September and October), South Africa has already accumulated up to 32 detections. In almost all these years, and proof of the ineffectiveness of the measure, Community inspectors detected CBS again after the suspension promoted by the CGA.

“Although South Africa usually gets big headlines by ‘selling’ such measures as a gesture of ‘responsibility and commitment’ to plant health, the truth is that the only thing they are after is to avoid a greater evil and for the EC to suspend exports of all their citrus to Europe,” warns Sanfeliu. The CGA has gone even further this year in its “cynical attitude”, describes the president of the interprofessional organisation. It has gone from criticising the Community regulation to prevent the entry of this dangerous fungus and branding it as “protectionist, to unfairly and specifically benefit the Spanish citrus industry” and, on this basis, pressurising its government to denounce Brussels before the World Trade Organisation (WTO) – as it has already achieved with the one filed against the Cold treatment for the ‘False Moth’ – to exhibiting this measure as a sign of its “spirit of cooperation with European citrus producers, especially from Spain” and doing so with little more than a “spirit of cooperation with European citrus growers, especially Spain” and to do so as an act of generosity by virtue of which “the South African sector is now ceding the management of citrus demand to the northern hemisphere”.

To prevent this disease from colonising European citrus growing and to introduce an objective criterion, Intercitrus is calling for the recovery of an article in the Community regulation that would allow the EU to order an automatic precautionary closure of its border in the event of more than 5 interceptions of consignments contaminated by this pest being detected, as existed in the past and was withdrawn at the time, precisely because of South African pressure. At the present time, given South Africa’s proven inability to control this disease, the interprofessional organisation is demanding an immediate reaction from the Commission, which should order a halt to imports of all citrus from this country. The organisation also warns that questionable pest management policies such as those being promoted in this southern country serve to highlight the value of Spanish crops, which are fully reliable and safe in terms of quality and guaranteed supply.

Intercitrus, on the other hand, can only censure the series of falsehoods that the CGA has been publicly maintaining in order to justify its ineffectiveness or lack of will in controlling a disease that, in fact, is regulated in the EU as a ‘priority disease’, in the top 20 of all the pests with the greatest economic and environmental impact.