Pesticide threatens beef sales

A Northland farmer who treated his cattle with a crop pesticide has put New Zealand's $400 million beef trade with Taiwan and South Korea at risk.

Details of New Zealand beef contaminated with the pesticide endosulfan made the television news headlines in Taiwan on Wednesday, generating the worst kind of publicity for exporters to the food safety sensitive market.

Endosulfan is a chlorine-based pesticide that can cause vomiting, diarrhoea and convulsions if consumed in high volumes.

New Zealand Food Safety Authority (NZFSA) officials say the levels identified were too small to pose any serious risk to human health. But they did breach international guidelines for export to those markets.

About 3200kg of potentially contaminated beef was identified in South Korea late last month and a further 900kg was later identified in Taiwan.

It was still too early to say if there would be any sales fallout, said Meat and Wool New Zealand chief executive Mark Jeffries.

At this stage trade officials in Taiwan and Korea appeared to be happy with the way the issue had been handled, he said.

Consumer reaction is harder to gauge.

The Taiwanese and South Koreans are notoriously safety conscious about food.

That has worked to New Zealand's advantage in the past three years as those markets have banned US beef because of "mad cow" disease fears. New Zealand beef exports to the region have nearly doubled.

"At least we have a good story to tell," Jeffries said.

"A mistake was made, we picked it up and we quickly informed our markets about the product that was affected."

PR and marketing teams in South Korea and Taiwan were busy translating that story to the importers and retailers who had been calling Meat and Wool New Zealand for information.

Meat and Wool is an industry-funded organisation that handles marketing in countries New Zealand exports to.

The contamination was traced back to about 10 cows on a Northland farm and one "foolish farmer", said NZFSA official Neil McLeod.

McLeod refused to name the farmer.

There was an investigation under way to determine whether any laws had been breached or whether it was an issue of industry regulation.

The affected meat was processed through Affco's Moerewa plant.

It was "business as usual" as far as sales to those markets went, said Affco operations manager Tony Miles yesterday.

Affco did not expect the issue to have any material financial impact.

Market failure

* Beef exports to Taiwan were worth $174 million in the year to September 2004 - up 44 per cent on the year before.

* Exports to Korea were worth $221 million - up 81 per cent.

* 4.1 tonnes of beef have been recalled from South Korea and Taiwan because of pesticide contamination.

* New Zealand beef can contain traces of the pesticide endosulfan - up to 0.1 part per million.

* The affected beef contained 0.5 parts per million.

- additional reporting NZPA