Irradiated mangoes now in NZ shops

The first shipments of irradiated fruit have arrived in New Zealand and are on sale in Auckland stores.

Nine tonnes of Australian tropical mangoes have been imported by a company called Fusion Marketing and are being sold by the Fruitworld chain of stores.

The first consignment was flown in on Saturday from the Steritech cobalt 60 irradiation factory near Brisbane; the second arrived yesterday.

Irradiation was cleared by the Ministry of Agriculture this year as an acceptable pest control measure after the intergovernmental body Food Standards Australia and New Zealand declared two years ago that irradiated food was not a threat to human safety.

Until then only irradiated spices were allowed to be sold here and because of perceived consumer resistance virtually none has been imported.

Queensland tropical fruits have long been off the menu for shoppers here because the levels of heat required to kill fruitfly also damage the fruit, or its appearance.

But opponents of irradiation say the damage consumers don't see could be much worse.

"I like Queensland mangoes but I wouldn't eat irradiated ones," Friends of the Earth spokesman Bob Tait said yesterday.

"Cobalt 60 is a highly radioactive isotope. Hospitals use a few thousand curies of cobalt 60 whereas the Steritech plant uses 6 million or more.

"You cannot damage the pests in the fruit without damaging the other chemicals, so it looks like a mango but its got other chemical changes."

Fruitworld managing director Ronald Chan said he could see nothing wrong with irradiated fruit, having researched the process on the internet, and been assured it was fully approved by the Government.

Each mango had a sticker on it saying it was irradiated, as required by law.

"It's going to mean more fruit coming in for the consumer to choose," Mr Chan told the Herald.

"Mexican mangoes are nowhere near as good as the Australian ones and they're treated by chemicals."

But Green Party health spokeswoman Sue Kedgley said that was not the case.

The South American mangoes were almost always steam-treated and there was no need to bring in the new ones.