Illegal pork import sparks disease alert

Border protection officials have discovered an illegal shipment of raw minced pork from South Korea.

"The raw meat was part of six pallets of cooked ham products imported from Korea between August and December 2005," said Biosecurity NZ executive David Hayes. "Raw meat imports from Korea are prohibited."

Raw meat imports from many countries are restricted to avoid bringing in animal diseases such as foot-and-mouth - endemic in parts of Asia - swine fever and hog cholera.

And in the past couple of years New Zealand pig farmers have been battling post-weaning multisystemic wasting syndrome, a pig disease which some farmers say was introduced through an unidentified infectious agent fed to pigs in uncooked pork, after the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry allowed controls on waste-feeding to lapse and before new controls were introduced on cooking imported meat.

The pork was discovered initially at Auckland during routine surveillance of food distributors and retailers by MAF quarantine staff looking for prohibited goods.

But further checks found it had been distributed throughout the country, including to Hamilton, Tauranga, Wellington and Christchurch.

So far, only 40kg has been recovered from the six tonnes known to have been imported.

The Food Safety Authority said the minced cutlets could pose a risk to livestock industries if the raw pork product was illegally fed to animals.

Other cooked pork in the same consignment is also being investigated, as it may have been incorrectly labelled.

- NZPA