The Australian tomato industry is still reeling from its biggest biosecurity threat to date, two months after an exotic disease put three South Australian businesses in indefinite quarantine, causing $20m in losses and shutting down some interstate and international trade.
The tomato brown rugose fruit virus is thought to have arrived in seeds imported from Europe in May. It was reported in August when observant staff at the Perfection Fresh Two Wells glasshouse, north of Adelaide, noticed some plants showing signs of infection.
Testing of more than 3,700 samples showed the virus had been contained to that glasshouse – one of Australia’s biggest – and two other nearby farms: Gawler River Tomatoes and the SA Tomato nursery. All three were placed in quarantine and hundreds of workers were stood down, and more than 1m plants are being destroyed.
It was initially thought the shutdown would last a few weeks, but Nick Secomb, director of plant and invasive species biosecurity at the Department of Primary Industries and Regions (PIRSA), says it will likely continue for several more months.
Decisions still have to be made about the length of quarantine, decontamination processes, potential avenues for compensation, and how producers can prove their plants and fruit are free from the highly contagious disease that also damages capsicums and chillies.
“We know that, without treatment, this disease can last four months on inert surfaces,” Secomb says.
“There’s work done in Europe that shows several months after this disease was present, it can still be there if you don’t treat it.”
The virus was first detected in Israel in 2014 and has since spread to the UK, Europe, the US, Mexico and China. The testing regime for importing tomato and capsicum seeds into Australia was tightened in 2019.
Secomb says they have eradicated similar viruses before, but experienced delays because only two interstate laboratories were accredited to handle this disease.
Last week, a lab in Adelaide was given the green light to test for the virus, which will speed up the testing process for growers who need to meet certification protocols once they have been agreed.
New Zealand and New Caledonia have suspended imports of all Australian tomatoes, and Queensland and Western Australia banned all host fruit – tomatoes, chillies and capsicums – from South Australia. New South Wales and Tasmania also tightened the rules for interstate trade.
Infected tomatoes pose no threat to human health, but consumers and home gardeners have also been asked to report any suspicious symptoms, such as deformities, yellow spots and wrinkled patches.
Jordan Brooke-Barnett, AUSVEG SA’s chief executive officer, says the sector and consumers appear to have dodged the worst, with no major supply shortages or price rises in Australia, and the prospect of WA reopening its borders to SA fruit.
But the effects on the three quarantined businesses have been immense, with losses totalling $20m-plus and rising by the day.
Michael Simonetta, chief executive of Perfection Fresh, says the government response was an overreach.
“This virus is being managed everywhere else in the world,” he says. “Growers live and deal with viruses every day of their life.
“It, quite frankly, blows my mind. We were managing the virus before we were shut down. It wasn’t affecting the quality of our fruit; it wasn’t affecting our yields.”
Despite having the capacity to isolate the 43ha glasshouse into 27 zones, Simonetta says authorities are treating the entire site as one, forcing the destruction of all 1.3m plants.
Almost 300 Perfection Fresh workers have been stood down and another 150 will go once all the plants are pulled out.
A hub established in the nearby town of Virginia is helping workers access government assistance and find new jobs on other farms and with meat processors.
Simonetta says Perfection Fresh’s losses are already in the “tens of millions of dollars” and increasing by hundreds of thousands of dollars every week.
Also at risk are almost $1m worth of seedlings on order that were supposed to be planted in the glasshouse this week.
“If they say we can start today, we’re four to six months away from having any production,” he says.
“But to get back into full production, we’re 12 to 18 months away.”
Brooke-Barnett says the virus is the biggest threat the Australian tomato industry has faced, but that an outbreak was inevitable.
Nevertheless Prof Geoff Gurr, an applied ecology expert at Charles Sturt University, says it is still worthwhile trying to stop the virus from becoming established, to allow Australian growers to maintain their competitive advantage in global markets.
A University of Melbourne analysis in 2020 put the value of the Australia’s biosecurity system at $314bn over 50 years, with a net return on investment of 30:1.
“The advantages of not having something in Australia are very significant,” Gurr says.
“The investment we make in biosecurity measures is tiny, but it’s a huge payback.”
South Australia is Australia’s biggest producer of glasshouse tomatoes, with 94ha yielding almost 45,000 tonnes valued at $148m in 2022-23, according to the Australian Horticulture Statistics handbook.
All up, Australian tomato growers produced more than 320,000 tonnes of tomatoes, valued at $570m.
Sandra Godwin is a freelance journalist based in Swan Hill, Victoria
