• The interprofessional expresses its “enormous satisfaction” with how the matter has been addressed, congratulates the minister for the “excellent technical work” carried out, and for the “intense political efforts deployed in recent days” to uphold scientific arguments in the fight against the ‘False Codling Moth’.
• The approved transit cold treatment applies only to oranges, so the citrus organization will continue to advocate for its extension to mandarins and grapefruits, which are also hosts of this pest.

The extraordinary session of the Standing Committee on Plants, Animals, Food and Feed (SCoPAFF) held this morning has served to definitively approve the cold treatment for oranges imported from countries affected by the ‘False Codling Moth’. After removing the discussion on this issue from the agenda of the meeting held on May 20, the efforts of the Minister of Agriculture, Luis Planas, first on Monday before the Commissioner for Health and Food Safety, Stella Kyriakides, and yesterday by raising the issue in the plenary session of the EU Council of Agriculture Ministers, have been crucial in redirecting the situation. “Planas has given the final and necessary push for the proposal to go ahead. What was approved today by the SCoPAFF goes beyond Spanish citrus farming; it is a historic step in favour of the plant health of the entire European agriculture,” evaluated the president of Intercitrus, Inmaculada Sanfeliu. All members of the interprofessional organization agree in expressing “enormous satisfaction” for the accomplished achievement and congratulate the aforementioned department for the “excellent technical work” carried out for months and for the “intense political efforts” deployed during these last days “to assert the scientific arguments” in the fight against this pest against “interests unrelated to phytosanitary issues, the sector, and Europe itself”.

Similarly, in the brief online meeting held by the representatives of the organization after learning the news, Sanfeliu took the opportunity to highlight the work that has been done as a sector: “Intercitrus is a tool in favour of citrus farming, a valid interlocutor that is capable of achieving much more united than walking separately”. Likewise, the interprofessional organization expressly thanked the support that the Valencian Government, led by its president, Joaquín Puig, and the councillor of the department, Mireia Mollà, has provided to this cause since November last year – when a citrus delegation travelled to Brussels.  

The decision of the SCoPAFF, which will be expedited so that it is published in the Official Journal of the European Union and comes into force before the end of June, implies a transitional regime for this campaign and a double alternative of cold treatment from the following season onwards. In the current campaign, the European Commission will require countries where Thaumatotibia leucotreta is declared – mainly South Africa and Zimbabwe for oranges – to perform pre-cooling at 5 degrees at the origin (at the same port of departure) and transit treatment (during the ship’s voyage) at between -1 and 2 degrees for 25 days. And by 2023, there will be a choice between two options: a cold treatment between -1 and 0 degrees for 16 days or another between -1 and 2 degrees for 20 days. In both cases, following the usual practices in this field, operators will be required to pre-cool at 0 degrees and 2 degrees, respectively. Among many other technical requirements, this proposal will impose control through sensors of the temperature records mentioned, which must be available, and a percentage of the shipments will be sampled and inspected.

The approved cold treatment is not internationally standardized and applied, among others, by authorities in the US or China. It will apply only to oranges, even though clementines, mandarins, and grapefruits are also hosts of the ‘False Codling Moth’. Therefore, Intercitrus has agreed to continue working in this direction.