Detective farmers tackle some slippery customers

Oysters that upset Asian diners also left a bad taste with New Zealand oyster producers, as CHRIS DANIELS reports.

Plump, juicy New Zealand oysters sell at a premium in the exclusive restaurants of Hong Kong.

So last summer, when 13 discerning seafood lovers there got queasy stomachs, diarrhoea and vomiting after downing some of our slippery delicacies, the finger of blame was pointed at our oyster farmers.

An investigation and eventual ban imposed on New Zealand oysters by the Hong Kong authorities as a result of the incidents has lifted the lid on suspicions of fraud and the illegal mislabelling of one of our premium exports.

Evidence collected by an investigator has revealed the contaminated seafood may have been Asian.

Exports have resumed this month, only after top level intervention by our Government, put an end to the ban that lasted most of this year.

Local oyster farmers say their industry, which exported shellfish worth $11.5 million last year, has been jeopardised by the Hong Kong ban.

If they had not been able to show that the contaminated oysters probably originated in Asia, lucrative markets in Japan and the United States would have suffered, along with New Zealand's reputation as a producer of safe, clean food.

Rachel Harvie, executive director of the Seafood Standards Council, says the ban also jeopardised the $169 million a year mussel export industry.

She said other markets were starting to get twitchy about the ban, and that was beginning to affect the whole shellfish industry.

There were 13 outbreaks of "Norwalk-like virus" linked to Hong Kong restaurants, which led to the trade ban being imposed.

While the virus is not unknown in New Zealand oysters - its presence has recently prompted health officials to close Northland marine farms - the contamination claims by Hong Kong authorities prompted our farmers to start their own investigation.

The results of this have shown that the evidence is far from clear.

Tim Francis, director and part owner of Fisheries Management Services, which conducts private investigations for fisheries companies, said the Hong Kong health authorities were frustrated at being unable to properly trace the oysters.

But as the suspect oysters were found in New Zealand boxes, a prima facie case had been established.

Mr Francis was asked by the New Zealand oyster farmers to travel to Hong Kong to investigate the issue and to try and save the reputation of our seafood.

He said there was "clear evidence" that some of the boxes that were seized were not New Zealand boxes. The labelling did not represent that of the New Zealand grower.

What may have happened, he said, was that inferior Asian oysters, which sell for about half the price of their New Zealand rivals, were mixed in with legitimate New Zealand produce.

The practice, known as "topping up", is endemic around the world, even here in New Zealand.

He has laid a complaint with the Hong Kong police and customs service, which is continuing to investigate the matter.

"I went through every one of the 13 incidents of poisoning and after about two weeks of going through all the details, they accepted that there was no evidence to support that they were in fact New Zealand oysters."

The president of the New Zealand Oyster Industry Association, Callum McCallum, said the reputation of New Zealand's seafood industry was put in serious danger by the Hong Kong ban.

While "topping up" was not new, it was the first time he had heard of it happening with New Zealand oysters.

One of the food poisoning cases occurred in February - months after the oysters had been sent there.

"We thought 'that's mad' - they may have just sat round, but they were all spoken for.

"We have elaborate stickers and they just put an address label on the old bins with our packhouse number."

All the incidents have been traced back to a single importer and Mr McCallum's company, Clevedon Coast Oysters has now stopped dealing with the importer, who has since been fined.

But his experience with Trade New Zealand over the problem has left a sour taste.

He said officials had overcharged the association for the use one of its empty Hong Kong offices, and had tried to charge $180 an hour for staff to talk about the problem with Tim Francis.

"This is a generic New Zealand seafood problem, but Trade NZ wanted to skin us for everything they could."

But Elizabeth Gollan, Trade NZ's senior trade commissioner to North Asia, disputes the claim.

She says the association was charged only $100 a day to use a meeting room for nine days.

It was unusual for Trade New Zealand to rent out its office space for clients and the charge was not unreasonable, especially considering the high cost of hiring a conference room in Hong Kong.

The nine hours charged was also "a very small percentage" of the time Trade NZ officials spent on the case.

Mr McCallum, who thinks organised crime is involved with the topping up of seafood, said it was notable that the importer at the centre of the problem had not asked for a refund for the allegedly contaminated oysters.

When Hong Kong health authorities asked for more samples, they were told they had all been dumped.

"He said he had destroyed 500 boxes of them, and he never asked for a refund.

"Strangely enough it had all disappeared in the tip."

Tony Zohrab, director of animal products at the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries, travelled to Hong Kong on behalf of the Government to try to get the ban lifted.

He says the Hong Kong authorities simply did not have the evidence needed to link our oysters with their food poisoning outbreak.

"Sure they had an outbreak of something, but we didn't think the linkage to New Zealand oysters was particularly strong. It wasn't conclusive."

But he cannot say for certain that one of the boxes had its label illegally changed.

"It transpired that one of the packages wasn't a New Zealand package, so it would seem there's been a bit of jiggery pokery going on over there - by the local trade, not by the authorities."

Dr Zohrab said that although Hong Kong was not a particularly big market for oysters, the ban still had a big effect in Asia.

The issue of fraudulently packaged New Zealand products was not new.

The ministry generally detected three or four cases a year, often involving meat from other countries.

He said the Hong Kong case remained unclear.

"I would just prefer to say it's unconvincing - either way you can't be definitive. The evidence just isn't there either way. The industry will insist there is, but I don't believe there is.

"There is just not enough evidence."

The Hong Kong Food and Environmental Hygiene Department said it would respond only to written questions about the case.

In its written replies, the department said the oysters were banned due to the discovery of the virus "in New Zealand oyster samples in connection with a cluster of food poisoning outbreaks [that] occurred here".

Asked if the department thought some of the contaminated oysters might have been illegally imported, it replied: "There is no evidence to substantiate such a thought."

This is despite the fact that one of the participants has already been fined for his involvement in the case, according to Tim Francis.

The Business Herald asked the department thought the case was justified "in light of revelations that the oysters that made people sick were likely not to have come from New Zealand?"

It replied: "The evidence available to FEHD is not suggestive of any oyster source other than New Zealand."

Asked if the false labelling of food products was a big problem in Hong Kong, it said: "We have a very effective and sustainable set of food legislation governing the proper and accurate labelling of food products here."

The case has prompted New Zealand oyster farmers to accelerate their quest for new laboratory methods of chemically identifying the origin of seafood.

"We need to get some way of earmarking things, so we know the oysters are New Zealand oysters," says Mr McCallum.

"Then we could tell the Hong Kong people: 'Get stuffed, they're not ours'."

The answer may come from the Otago lab of Dr Barrie Peake, a senior lecturer in marine chemistry.

He has developed a method of "fingerprinting" shellfish by analysing the trace chemicals found in their bodies.

Because shellfish are "filter feeders" they are particularly susceptible to pollution. By using a spectrometer, Dr Peake says he can work out whether an oyster came from Foveaux Strait or Bluff Harbour.

The method, which is cheaper and more effective than DNA testing, can also show if an oyster was grown in New Zealand or elsewhere.

Samples of the dubious oysters at the centre of the contamination scare are to arrive at Dr Peake's laboratory in the next few weeks, and the origin of Hong Kong's stomach troubles may finally be revealed.