Tomato virus pivot shifts strategy, giving hope to growers
Tomato producers in South Australia impacted by a fruit virus hope to "rebuild their lives" as officials concede eradication is no longer possible.
This week, the National Management Group (NMG) of biosecurity experts and industry representatives decided it was not "technically feasible" to eradicate the tomato brown rugose fruit virus (ToBRFV) from Australia after it crossed state boundaries.
Perfection Fresh in the northern Adelaide Plains food bowl region was the first site to detect the highly contagious virus in August.
Almost a year on, CEO Michael Simonetta still remembers "one of the worst days" of his career when he told nearly 500 employees he had no job available for them.
"We pulled out 1.2 million healthy plants from our glasshouse and dumped hundred of tonnes of perfectly good, safe, edible fruit," he said.
"It reached the point I couldn't watch it any longer.
"I feel more for our staff at our site at Two Wells. It was heartbreaking, it was devastating, words failed me."
Despite infected tomatoes being safe to eat, Perfection Fresh is one of three South Australian sites that face export restrictions to some states.
The virus spread to a Victorian tomato glasshouse in January and infested seedlings were in May detected at the same site — but this time they came from a commercial nursery in New South Wales, a state with no previous links to the virus.
Last week, Victorian authorities said tracing was underway to find out where the infection came from.
In those two states, hundreds of jobs have been lost and growers have had to destroy thousands of affected plants.
The NMG has focused on eradication but on Thursday agreed it will move to management — a strategy Mr Simonetta and other growers have long called for.
"We advocated from day one that this virus needed to be managed and eradication was impossible, we thought, based on what's happening around the world," Mr Simonetta said.
"The reality is growers manage viruses every day of their lives and this is no different.
"The move now to management will allow all of those businesses to … get back to business and to rebuild their lives because this decimated a lot of growers."
Even so, Mr Simonetta said it would be January or February before his business returned to full production.
SA Primary Industries Minister Clare Scriven on Friday said if the state took a management approach when the virus was first detected, it was "almost certain" other local growers would have been blocked from exporting tomatoes interstate.
"We've been very focused on ensuring that we've had market access for over 200 growers that we have here in South Australia," she said.
"That would continue to be our focus as we move to what's called the management phase."
Ms Scriven said the national strategy change was prompted by additional detections interstate but in South Australia, the virus has been contained to three businesses.
"We've been able to manage access to a number of other jurisdictions for one of those businesses, the other two have not been able to to a large extent," she said.
The NMG said current strategies to contain the spread remained in place until "an agreed national strategy for management can be developed in consultation with impacted industries".
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